The Madness Project (The Madness Method)

by Bralick, J. Leigh

  The kid bolted off down the street, shimmying a drain pipe and scuttling through a broken window like a little mouse. Tam had already disappeared, leaving the street empty besides me and Jig. We passed the Bricks’ door but it was closed, and if they had sentries out, I couldn’t tell. Nobody stopped us or challenged us. The whole long street felt eerily quiet.

  As we rounded the corner of the building, we almost stumbled over Shade, who sat slumped against the wall with his head on his knees. Jig flashed me a glance and nudged Shade with his foot. For a second, Shade didn’t move at all. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

  Then he said, “I’m awake. Don’t kick me again or I’ll break your leg.”

  When neither of us moved he lifted his head, and I winced. He’d always been a bit pale, but now he looked gaunt, too, his cheeks hollow and grey.

  “Y’ a’right? You look awful,” I said.

  He narrowed a hard glance at Jig. “What’s he want with me now?”

  Jig snorted. “I dan’ like you, but even I wouldn’t beat a man when he’s already down, like.”

  “No?” Shade asked.

  For a second they just measured each other, quiet and calculating, then Jig’s mouth quirked in a smile and he said, “Not unless I’m the one as put him down in the first place.”

  “Makes sense.” Shade rubbed his hands on his thighs. “What’re you two doing here?”

  “Here in the Bricks’ turf, you mean?”

  “The Bricks?” he asked, frowning a bit.

  “Y’know,” I said, jerking my head toward the building. “This sorry lot.”

  A minute and his face cleared, and he said, “Ah.”

  I scuffed my toe against a bit of broken pavement. “We came looking for you.”

  “What, were you worried?”

  “I wasn’t,” Jig said. “I just came because of Hayli.”

  “I was.” My cheeks tingled at my honesty. “Now come on. Get up.”

  It didn’t take a lot of convincing to drag Shade back to the Hole. Nan brought him soup and bread even though it was the middle of the afternoon, and he didn’t even put up a fight about it. When he’d sopped up the last of the soup he sat back and fixed me with a curious look.

  “What do you know about the Bricks?” he asked.

  “Nothing much,” I said, “except Coolie keeps all those poor folks from coming here for help. Tells ‘em all kinds of lies about us too, prob’ly, to scare them off.”

  “I heard some of them,” Shade said, pondering the depths of his soup cup.

  “So they just kicked you out?” Jig asked.

  It had surprised me a bit that Jig had stuck around once we got back, and I wagered it baffled Shade a bit too. He frowned at Jig a long moment, like he was trying to figure out if the question was some kind of trap.

  Then he shrugged and said, “Yeah. They were a bit tight this morning. Something happened with another crew, I guess. They didn’t want me sticking my nose in their business.” His eyes glinted. “Can’t blame them.”

  I swallowed. “Why’d you gan over to the Bricks, Shade? Div’n you ken that us and them dan’ exactly get along?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  Jig snorted. “I’m sure.”

  Shade leaned forward, planting his arms on the table. “Jig? Are we going to have problems, you and I?”

  “Depends,” Jig said with a feral kind of smile.

  And they just stared at each other, like dogs with their hackles up, primed for a fight. Then all at once—at exactly the same moment—they both kind of grinned. I knew enough of boy-speak to know what that meant. They might not be friendly but it was a truce and that was good enough for me.

  “Well,” Shade said, getting up. “Thanks for the food. I’d better head on before the Hammer of God finds me here.”

  It took me all of two seconds to realize he was talking about Derrin. I gulped back a laugh but it came out anyway, and beside me I heard Jig snickering. No one had ever given Derrin a nickname before, but somehow it fit. He had that air.

  “Where’re you ganna gan?” I asked.

  He hesitated, studying me sidelong, his fingers thrumming on the table. In the flickering gas light his bruised eye had a weird cast to it, all dark and shadowy and laced with the white spiderweb tattoo. A minute and I realized I’d got to gripping the bench by my leg. He scared me a bit, Shade did. I didn’t know why. He was like fire.

  “I need to get some information,” he said. He left it at that for a tick, then he got a dangerous glint in his eyes and a mad little smile. “Wanna help?”

  Jig shifted, shooting me an anxious glance. I knew he was thinking I should report to Derrin…but what was Derrin going to make me do? Play another memory game? Practice swaggering like a boy, since he couldn’t persuade me to doll up? I swallowed. I should be doing something. With all that I’d already learned from Derrin, surely he wouldn’t mind…

  “Jig, you can come along too if you like.”

  “Come on,” I said, sliding off the bench. “It’s not like we’ve got aught else to do. Just setting about on our hands all day…”

  Jig tossed his head, flicking his hair from his eyes. “A’right, then. Lead on.”

  We piled out of the Hole and left the property, but soon as we’d hit the streets, Shade stopped to lean against the wall of an old storefront. Merdon’s Emporium said the old sign over his head, or used to say before it lost half its letters. It had been empty so long now even the rats found it boring.

  Shade hooked one ankle over the other and crossed his arms, tilting his head to study the street.

  “First things. This city is a maze,” he said. “Where the hell are we, anyway? I rode the rails in and started walking, but now I can’t get my bearings. Where’s the station from here?”

  I pointed right. “That way. This old factory used to build rail cars and things like that, before the accident.”

  He arched a brow, curious.

  “Some canny big explosion,” Jig said. “Killed twen’y people, shut down the works.” He nodded at the broken windows and rusted smoke stacks looming up behind us. “It’s proper haunted now. None of us gan up there. Even Vim says he saw a hundred-mouthed thayo in there. You ken? He’s a skeptic. He wouldn’t make that up.”

  At that Shade got a wicked, wild grin, his eyes all alight, and I just knew he’d go exploring the place first chance he got. It was the most excited I’d ever seen him. Part of me expected Jig had told him about the haunting just to make him go in. It was a mean thing some of the older Hole rats did to the fish when they first arrived. Derrin had done it to me when I was seven, when he was still a kid with a rascally streak, and not the Derrin who looked after the fish and kept us all in line.

  I shivered. The memory still had the strength of a yesterday. Even now I could hear the whispers in the empty room. The whir of long-silent machines, the hiss of steam from broken boilers. The drip of blood without a body to bleed. I’d got all of two steps in before the hair on my neck stood straight on end and sent me screaming like a baby back to Derrin. If Shade wanted to go poking about, I wouldn’t stop him, but I’d laugh like crazy if he got spooked.

  He frowned at the sky. “Right, so where’s everything else?”

  “Why d’you need to know?” Jig asked, narrowing his eyes. “Div’n figure you’d be coming back. Thought Derrin made it pretty clear you’re not welcome.”

  “Oh, bog off,” Shade snapped.

  “Shut up, both of you,” I said. “There’s still a chance he can get in. If…” I studied Shade under my lashes. “If you want it.”

  “Think I should?” he asked, like the notion baffled him somehow.

  “What use would he be to us?” Jig asked, getting prickly.

  Shade pushed away from the wall so he stood just inches from Jig. “Don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a mage. So what do you think?”

  “A’right, a’right, stop,” I said, because I could just see the fangs coming out and
I didn’t want to have to break them up. “Would you two grow up?”

  They both looked a bit sheepish, but Shade just folded his hands into his pockets with a shrug, and Jig turned away, swinging his arms to stretch his shoulders.

  I let out my breath. “Thank you. So, look. That way is the Bricks,” I said and pointed down an alley behind Shade. Then I swung my hand left. “That way heads north to the city center and the palace district. Dan’ gan that way unless you have to. Just a bunch of stuffy snobs and too many coppers.”

  “Good to know,” Shade said.

  I nodded at the road that swept past the factory behind me. “The river’s that way, and…let’s see. Keep gannin’ past the Bricks and you get into real crooked territory. You think the Bricks are bad? You’ve never met Kreef and his crew, or the sugar dealers who work for Trip. That’s a bad lot. And then there’s Vanek Meed, who holes up on Front Street, and I think he’s got to be the worst of them all.”

  “Why, what does he do?”

  “He’s got the real power down here. Like a master at the chessboard,” Jig said. “Controlling all the pawns.”

  “Who’re the pawns?” Shade asked, frowning.

  “What are pawns?” I asked, because I’d never heard the word at all. It surprised me a bit that Shade had.

  Jig ignored me. He had a strange, brilliant look in his eyes as he studied Shade, which got me feeling a mite uncomfortable. “We’re the pawns. And down here, he’s the king.”

  “I have no use for kings,” Shade said, voice low. Then he straightened up and said more loudly, “He sounds swell. I’d like to meet him.”

  “Wait, what?” Jig said.

  I gaped at him.

  “Come along if you like,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll just…go alone”

  “They’ll kill you,” I whispered. “You wouldn’t even reach the front door. You think just anyone can pop on in for a visit? That man…he’s got the ear of the Chief Inspector. That’s where he gets his power. If he likes you, you’re safe. If your enemies give him enough dough, you’re not. One word from him and the coppers come in and round you up and you’re off to the mines.”

  Shade’s eyes darkened, but the rest of his face stayed calm as ever. “Is the Hole safe from him?”

  The clouds thickened, casting the street in shadow, and the wind picked up. I flinched, expecting rain, but none came. Just the angry gusts clawing my hair and batting our clothes.

  “He and Rivano have an understanding, I’ve heard,” Jig said. “For now.”

  “Does the Hole have any enemies?”

  “Besides the Bricks?” I laughed. “Well, I suppose most folks who aren’t us dan’ like us for one reason or another. That dan’ make them enemies, really. Just not friends.”

  That got me thinking about what Pika had said about Shade. I liked to think that me and him could be friends, but he was so…closed. Even now, as we talked, his eyes moved constantly, fixing on everything but me. I could tell Jig was a bit antsy. Maybe he didn’t trust Shade, or maybe he just had no patience to stand around and talk. He bounced on his toes, the wind scattering his hair into his eyes until he batted it back—twice. He’d never wear a hat unless it was one he could use as a weapon.

  “Look, what’re we doing out here?” he asked.

  “All those folks underground,” Shade said. “Where do they all get food?”

  “That what you wanted to know? Not my business,” Jig said.

  “Isn’t it, though?” Shade asked.

  He fixed such a strange look on Jig that Jig got a bit twitchy, and that made me want to smile. Jig was an arrogant cad, mostly, and I got the sense Shade had just questioned what kind of a man he was, without ever spelling it out, and without even raising his voice. And watching Jig squirm under that cold stare had to be the best thing I’d seen in ages.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jig muttered, when he finally chased down his voice.

  Shade didn’t answer. A minute and he gave a faint kind of smile, and turned to me. I jumped. I couldn’t help it, because he still had that ice-hard gleam in his eyes that I thought he’d only meant for Jig.

  “If I say the word supplier, does that mean a jot to either of you?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Should it?”

  He tipped his head back, jaw tight.

  “Why won’t you just tell us what you’re after?” I asked.

  “Not sure I even know, myself,” he said. “I need to find who the Bricks’ supplier is, but I don’t even know what that means.”

  My mouth fell open. I remembered overhearing Derrin and Kantian talking once, when they’d met out on the west side of the Hole and hadn’t seen me sitting on the wall. Kantian had asked Derrin to get the supplier’s name, though I didn’t hear any reason why, and now Derrin had given a job to Shade.

  “Derrin?” I asked.

  Shade finally glanced at me again, his lips tightening in a half-hidden smile. “Smart girl,” he murmured.

  “Well,” I said, quick, “Coolie won’t tell you. Not ever.”

  “Figured that already.” He sighed and kicked the wall. “Suppose I dragged you out here for nothing. I don’t even know how to start looking.”

  I expected Jig to make a smart comment, but he just nodded and said, “I’d tell you if I knew. Honest. But I dan’.”

  “Well. See you around,” Shade said, and just like that he turned to go.

  “Hey, Shade!” I shouted. “Why do you keep doing that? Lamming off like that all the time?”

  “Can’t stay,” he said with a phantom smile, and then he was gone.

  Chapter 11 — Tarik

  Now that I knew where I was, I knew exactly what I had to do next. It took over half an hour, since I got woefully lost not once, but twice, but finally I arrived outside the palace gates. Only a token guard stood at post. This was the time of year when the palace grounds were open to the whole city for visits and formal tours, since the royal family was gone and the Assembly was out of session. Some of the Ministers and their families liked to stay in Brinmark over the holidays, and an army of secretaries and advisors and paper-pushers could never be persuaded to leave, but the place still felt eerily quiet.

  Inside the palace, a red-headed woman in a smart green suit and felt hat stood with a small group of warmly-clad visitors, some of them carrying strangers’ guides with well-worn leather binding. As I stepped into the grand entry, she was just finishing an explanation of the palace’s history.

  “And these days it is the official residence of Geyn’s son Trabin, our current monarch, along with his wife, Queen Elanar and their son Tarik. Elanar is the eldest daughter of the Grand Duke of Tulay. The marriage was part of an alliance between our two nations at the beginning of the Island Wars.”

  She caught sight of me and her forehead puckered with a frown.

  “Please excuse me a moment,” she told her audience, and marched over to me, her heeled boots snapping on the marble. “I’m sorry, young man, but this is a private tour.” Her eyes raked over me, me in my filthy clothes, with my black eye and tattoo. “I’m afraid you will have to leave the premises.”

  “The palace is open to the public,” I said, and smiled. “I’m not here for a tour.”

  Her lips tightened. I knew what she was thinking, because I would have thought it too, as Tarik, watching a street rat idling in the entrance of my palace. She thought I was here to rob the place. Funny, I might have considered robbing the kitchen, if it weren’t that stealing from myself seemed so…odd.

  The woman craned her neck to peer past my shoulder, trying to catch someone’s attention. The guard, of course—not the Royal Guard who stood in strict silence at the outer gate, but the member of the watch who kept a sentry post just outside the palace doors. After a moment she lifted her hand in a wave. I sighed and shoved my hands in my pockets, and listened to the tap of his boots as he strode toward us.

  “Sir, I have guests to attend to, and this young man refuses to leave. I r
ather think…” Her voice trailed faintly and she gave a meaningful nod toward me, adding in a half-whisper as if I couldn’t hear, “…he doesn’t belong.”

  “What’s this,” the guard said, studying me through a glower. “What’s your game, lad?”

  The woman took that as her cue and swept back to her visitors.

  “I’m here to see someone,” I said.

  My heart felt a little funny. I knew this man. I’d seen him nearly every day of my life for the past five years. Somehow I’d never imagined how much it would hurt to be stared at as though I were a criminal by the very people who had once sworn to protect me.

  “That’s what they all say,” he said, with a little huff of a laugh.

  “His name is Kor.”

  That sobered him up, turning his contempt to interest. “What’s that? Who’re you here for?”

  “That’s all I know.” I shrugged. “Said his name was Kor. He told me I’d find him here.”

  For a long while he just frowned at me, and I tried not to meet his gaze too defiantly.

  “All right,” he said, tense and uncertain. “Come with me. I believe he’s here at the moment. No funny business, though, or I’ll put you in cuffs.”

  About halfway across the grand entrance I remembered that I was Shade, not Prince Tarik, so I made a show of staring up and around at the white marble pilasters and crystal chandeliers with their glowing electrical bulbs as though I’d never seen the like. I also played the wicked trick of hesitating just a moment too long beside a display case housing some of my great-grandfather’s fine silver, earning a dangerous glare from the guard.

  He led me around toward the South Ward, where most of my father’s staff had their offices and conference chambers. A few red-robed and coiffured officials stood conferring in the broad hallway near one of the meeting rooms, brandishing sheaves of papers at each other like weapons. One of them peered down his bulbous nose at me as we passed, putting a hitch in their argument, and then I barely heard him mutter to one of the others,