The Madness Project (The Madness Method)

by Bralick, J. Leigh

  I hesitated. Kantian hadn’t said it, actually. Neither had Derrin. I scuffed my feet, plucking crumbs from the top of the roll and eating them, one by one.

  “What’d you tell him, then?”

  He stared at the floor. “You a’right, Hayli? You got me worried when you div’n show. Did they cop you?”

  “Not really.” I shrugged. “Well, sort of, but they let me gan. They div’n think aught funny about it.”

  “Why dan’ you ever tell anyone you’re a mage?” he asked. “That was canny mad, seeing you Shift, like.”

  I studied him a bit, but he didn’t look apt to hate me for it. Still, just because Jig might put up with me being a mage didn’t mean all the skitters would. Most of them didn’t seem to care two jots about Rivano’s mages, but they didn’t have to live with them.

  “Dan’ want folks to know is all,” I said. “I got reasons. So dan’ gan telling anybody, please?”

  “Sure. Wha’ever.” He let out his breath and turned away. “You did good, yeah? Sorry I couldn’t help you.”

  My mouth twitched, wanting to smile. Praise like that was hard to come by, especially from Jig, and it got me feeling terribly proud of myself.

  “Well,” I said. “I’m sorry I div’n get you in. Was Kantian awful skundered at you?”

  He didn’t move. I put my hand on his back to make him turn about, but he hissed in pain and pulled away, and strode off across the barracks.

  “Jig!” I cried, rushing after him and snatching his arm. “What’s wrong? What’d he do to you?”

  “Bog off, Hayli. It’s not your worry.”

  He shook my hand off and stalked away, shoulders hunched. I stared after him, my thoughts all reeling with confusion. Here I’d been so convinced that Jig would blame me for our failure, but what if…

  What if he didn’t?

  Derrin caught Jig at the door of the barracks. I watched from where I stood, wondering at the worry in Derrin’s eyes. When Jig pulled away and disappeared into the corridor, Derrin cussed something under his breath and kicked the door frame.

  “Derrin,” I called.

  “Is that all the dinner you’re eating?” he asked as he joined me, nodding at the roll in my hand.

  “Jig gave it to me. I div’n feel like gannin’ to the mess.”

  Derrin sighed.

  “What’s bothering?” I asked. “Is Jig jake? I was sure he ratted me out to the Boss…”

  “No,” he said. “He took the fall, Hayli. He said it was his fault. Said he pushed you too soon.”

  I drew in a thin little breath. “Jig said that?” I whispered, stunned. “What’d Kantian do?”

  “Gave him the lash. And no rations for three days.”

  I covered my mouth, stifling some kind of gasp of shock and grief. “Why’d he do that?” I cried, almost hollering it. I didn’t even know who I was shouting about, Jig or Kantian. “Why’d he… That’s not fair!”

  “I know.”

  I stared at the roll, then held it up between us like a question.

  “Guess he wasn’t hungry,” he said.

  He turned and walked away, leaving me there with the roll in my hand, my mouth hanging open. It made all the sense in the world. Derrin couldn’t stand to see any of the skitters punished with hunger. It’s how he’d saved me, after all, sneaking me food on the sly. I’d seen him do it a dozen times since for the others. And now Jig…

  I rushed through the Hole, searching all the usual spots, but couldn’t spot Jig anywhere. Not in the lounge with Kite and Coins, or up in the courtyard with Anuk and the wee skitters, who were kicking a leather ball around in the dark. The kid up on the gate post just shrugged when I asked if he’d seen Jig leave.

  Finally I gave up searching for him. And then, even though I didn’t feel the least bit hungry, I sat up on the wall and ate the roll bite by bite, because of the way Jig had given it to me, and the way he had gone without.

  Chapter 9 — Tarik

  The footman didn’t take me to my father’s study as I expected. Halfway to the Long Ward he turned down a side corridor that smelled faintly like wet stone and electricity. The hallway ended in a narrow plunge of bleached steps; they glared, blindingly bright, from the large white lamps strung on the walls.

  If there was one forbidden place in the palace I didn’t care to explore, it was the subterrane. Something about those corridors and rooms had always made my skin crawl. Maybe the air, too cold and too dry, or the heavy sterile smell and the stark electrical lights. Maybe the series of bolted doors with their windows papered over, as if they hid some monstrosity and not just artifacts and relics of ancient palace history.

  We turned down a narrower corridor and a chill turned my hair on end. I’d never been in this part of the subterrane at all.

  “Where are we going, Ebson?” I asked.

  “One of your father’s secure rooms, Your Highness.”

  “Secure rooms?”

  “In case of war, you know. We’re in the palace bunker now.”

  I arched a brow but kept my thoughts to myself. I didn’t have time to pursue the conversation anyway, because the footman stopped suddenly in front of a closed door and hammered on it three times, hard. Then he turned the wheel, spinning it until the lock released.

  A wheel for a door handle, I thought, bemused, like aboard a submersible.

  “Your Highness,” Ebson said, bowing and stepping back.

  I frowned, but I could hear my father’s voice speaking to someone inside the room, so I steeled my nerves and entered. I tried not to jump when the door sealed behind me.

  The room was enormous, with an army of steam radiator screens lined up along one wall, facing down a row of barren wood furnaces on the other. A massive table occupied the middle ground, and I just glimpsed a bar with a sitting area back in the shadows.

  When I got close enough to see, I found my father sitting alone and silent on the edge of a thick sideboard, half in shadow from a nearby oil lamp. He waved his brandy glass at me, the light chasing amber rainbows from the cut crystal.

  “Ah, Tarik.”

  “You wished to speak with me?”

  He gave me a long look, his glass poised halfway to his lips. “Mm,” he said, and took a sip of the liquor.

  I kept my hands at my sides and tried not to squirm as he calculated my worth. It took me a moment to remember that I’d only just heard him speaking to someone else. I paced a few more steps forward, hunting the shadows and trying to ignore my father’s dead cold stare.

  “Where is he?” I asked finally.

  “I asked him to give us a moment. He’ll be back.”

  I scowled. “There’s no door.”

  “Did you even know this room existed five minutes ago?”

  That silenced me. I stood carefully, not exactly facing him but not turning my back to him either. My father was the sort of person I never wanted to face head on, not if I could help it. If I had to, it usually meant I was in trouble. I remembered a time when I didn’t feel that way, and it made my heart hitch with a shred of nostalgia.

  That was so long ago.

  He waved his glass at me again and asked, “Drink?”

  I slanted him a strange glance, giving him my mother’s raised brow. My father reserved it for threats; for my mother it was punctuation.

  “You’re old enough to drink with me, Tarik,” he said with a sigh, and poured a trickle of amber liquid into another glass.

  I uprooted myself to take the drink from him, and swallowed my first sip under his scrutiny. When I didn’t cough he suppressed a smile that surprised me more than the brandy.

  “Griff?” he asked.

  I couldn’t hide a faint grin as I remembered the first time I’d slipped Griff a flask of brandy. He’d retched in the carriage house and tried to blame it on my hound when our old chauffeur Seelar found the mess. Then he’d tried to accuse me of poisoning him when someone (me) told Samyr the tale. He’d never forgiven me for it.

  Bu
t I didn’t tell my father any of that. I just cleared my throat a little and shrugged, and said, “No.”

  My father laughed, one short laugh of surprise when all I expected was his fury. And the thought struck me that I didn’t really know my father at all. I’d spent the last twelve years of my life lamenting that he didn’t know me, and I’d never turned my judging eye on myself.

  “So. Seventeen,” he said, talking to his liquor. “You’ve done well for yourself. There were a few years when I worried about you, but you seem to have come through all right.”

  I bristled. “No offense intended, but how can you say that?”

  “I see you with my own eyes. Your tutors speak highly of you. The public certainly appreciates you. Seems like every day I see some new picture of you decorating the front page of the Herald. Boxing, crew, polo…quite the sportsman, aren’t you?”

  I grimaced. There were few things I despised quite as much as having my picture taken, but Mother insisted I never back down from a boxy. And I’d never been very good at spotting their bulky cameras before they pinned me down, especially during sporting events.

  “You miss my meaning,” I said, the brandy making me bold. “You’ve never given me more than a passing glance, and no more concern than the footman. And now you say I’ve done well, and you expect your praise to mean something to me?”

  “As your King at least, yes, I do.”

  “The only thing that you ever cared about me doing was not doing the one thing I was born to do.”

  He slammed his glass onto the table, stabbing his other hand at me—the whole hand, like the head of a spear. I backed a step, and hated that I did.

  Then he sighed, raking his hand through his silvering hair, and said, “This is not how I wanted this conversation to go.”

  I drank brandy and didn’t answer.

  “Tarik, it’s precisely because of that…ability that I called you here.”

  I stopped mid-sip, the fiery liquid turning caustic in my mouth. I swallowed before it choked me, and slowly lowered my glass.

  “I’ve never used it,” I said. “If anyone’s told you otherwise, they lied to you. I did as you asked. Buried it.”

  “And now you misunderstand me.” He paused, and I didn’t dare meet his gaze. “I’m revoking that command.”

  “Beg pardon?” I asked automatically, almost dropping the glass in my surprise.

  “Listen.”

  But then he just leaned back against the table, staring at the ground, hands clasped between his knees. A minute slipped by, then another. I shifted and sat down in one of the tall-backed chairs, balancing my glass on my thigh and trying not to notice his discomfort.

  “I need your gift, Tarik,” he said, low, reluctant.

  I couldn’t tell what surprised me more—that he claimed to need it, or that he called it my gift.

  “What if I’ve lost it?” I asked. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Don’t give me that hogwash.”

  I met his gaze evenly for about half a moment before my nerves failed me and I turned away. The worst thing of all was the absolute silence. Not even the radiators were ticking or hissing in the background. Just pure, cold silence that turned the blood in my ears to a crashing surf.

  Finally, to say something, I asked, “Why?”

  “Rivano. You know what the problem is with people like Rivano?” my father asked. “They think they’re God’s avengers. As if they have every right to do whatever they need to do to accomplish their divinely-ordained mission. And somehow, they can convince people it’s true.”

  I eyed him over the rim of my glass. He must have realized he hadn’t explained anything, because he sighed heavily and slumped his shoulders.

  “I’ve come to believe that the IC has been compromised.”

  “You mean he’s got someone on the inside?”

  “Yes,” he said, dryly. “That’s what that means.”

  I rolled my eyes and buried myself in the back corner of the chair, trying not to laugh at the irony of an Intelligence Committee who knew everything about everyone but didn’t know which of its members were real.

  “Well?” I asked. “That’s their problem. Can’t they figure out who the operative is?”

  “Not so easily.”

  “Isn’t that their job?”

  He met my gaze. “You obviously aren’t considering the sort of people with whom Rivano likes to surround himself.”

  For once I didn’t look away. “People like me.”

  “As you say.”

  I tried to imagine what exactly that meant. Did Rivano have people who could shift their appearances, like me? Or did they have other gifts? How had he gotten spies inside? A corner of my mind remembered the Jixy girl I’d met, but I pushed her aside, gently. The tramp kid was just a coincidence.

  “And you’re sure about all this?” I asked, regarding the empty depths of my glass.

  “Some of my informants have alerted us that certain secrets have been spread in the underground. Secrets that no one outside the Intelligence Committee could know.”

  I swallowed, pitying the poor bastard who had been rash enough to challenge the IC. Must be he had a death wish.

  “And it has to be one of Rivano’s pets?” I asked.

  My father considered that briefly. “Honestly, no. But from all we’ve been able to discover, he’s the only one in the south streets who seems to have any connection to the anarchist movement, so it’s our best guess.”

  I studied him thoughtfully, struck by just how strange it was that we were having this conversation. How strange that he spoke to me almost like an equal…or that I spoke to him like one. It had certainly never happened before.

  “Father,” I said, the word tasting foreign in my mouth. I waved my glass at him. “Has something happened that you’re not telling me?”

  “We found another body, the fifth this year. My investigators tell me they suspect the Clan’s involvement.”

  I frowned. The city suffered well more than triple that many murders in a year; something was special about these five.

  “Who was it?”

  “They…couldn’t tell.”

  I shuddered. “I don’t understand how this concerns me.”

  “If you can bring me proof that the Clan is murdering people, that is all the reason I need to bring the full weight of the law down on them.”

  “Banish them? Or execute them?”

  He sighed and looked away with a frown, not bothering to answer me. I ground my teeth and leaned forward to slide the empty glass onto the table.

  “Are you worried because they’re murdering people, or because they’re anarchists?” I asked.

  “You should be worried that they’re anarchists. If they take it into their heads to go the way of Cromis, or Tulay, then we’ll have a bloody war on our hands, and that will put you right at the heart of it whether you like it or no.”

  I swallowed. The Herald had printed a story just the week before about the bloodbath in Cromis, where some of the citizens had decided after a century of peace that their king and his laws were illegitimate. At the end of the day, the whole royal family except some second cousin of the queen’s had been slaughtered, and the army had stepped in to restore order—a pale, fragile kind of order that had left hundreds of innocent citizens dead in the streets. When Tulay’s Grand Duke, my grandfather, tried to send aid, his own people threatened to revolt.

  Sometimes it felt as though the world were coming apart at the seams. I’d just never dreamed it would tear so close to home.

  “So, what exactly do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Learn the truth.”

  “The truth,” I echoed. “About Rivano and these murders? About your intelligence advisors, or the anarchists, or…?”

  “All of it.”

  “Me.”

  “Listen, Tarik, you’re the only one who can do this. Are you saying you won’t?”

  I sat back, hooking one ankle over my
knee. “I’m just surprised that you esteem me that highly. I haven’t exactly distinguished myself in the subtleties of the Court, you know.”

  He snorted. “And that’s exactly why I need you.”

  He pushed away from the sideboard. I frowned, watching him flick a switch on an unassuming grey box set into the wall. Some sort of radio call box, I figured, and was satisfied when static scraped across the empty space. He tapped a small button, snuffing out the hiss.

  “Kor. Now.”

  I raised both eyebrows. “Kor?” I echoed. “That’s his name? Where’d you find him, the boxing ring?”

  He just speared me a sharp glance and backed away as the lines of a door materialized out of the pale stone. It groaned and sighed and finally staggered open. A moment later a man appeared in the shadows, looking half shadow himself, with all his edges melting into uncertainty. He didn’t walk into the room so much as conquer it with one ground-devouring step.

  The corner of my mouth tightened into something between a smile and a grimace. Kor stood like a thundercloud where his single step had landed him, shapeless in a long coat, bald head shining in the grim light. His dark eyes shifted, turning to me with disconcerting disinterest.

  “Kor,” my father said. “The Crown Prince, Tarik.”

  One small muscle twitched at Kor’s jaw, but he said nothing and didn’t even grace me with a smile. Something about him made me feel about half my age. I wanted to seem strong and undaunted, but somehow I couldn’t budge. Couldn’t even straighten up and offer a polite how-d’you-do. If anything, I slouched a little deeper into the chair, hoping I looked nonchalant and not just insecure.

  But I gave him the hardest stare I could and asked, “Who the hell are you?”

  My father gave an exasperated sigh. “Tarik.”

  But to my surprise, Kor just laughed—a huge, indiscreet sort of laugh that belonged to bars and boxing rings.

  “I’ll take him.”

  My breath hissed out. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Kor gusted toward the sideboard, decanting a tumblerful of brandy into my discarded glass and downing it in one gulp. In the flighty shadows, I had a hard time getting a good gauge on him. He wasn’t terribly old, perhaps in his mid-thirties, but nothing about him seemed young. And for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how my father knew him, or why he would have him in his bunker instead of his prison.