I hesitated. I’d Cloaked out of desperation just twice before, and I still wasn’t quite confident I knew how I’d done it. If I lost my concentration…if I forgot I was trying to hide…I could be found out, and I had no idea what that would mean. But for all that, it was our best option. Maybe Shade was wearing off on me, but I couldn’t imagine sitting around and waiting for the right information to stumble over me.
“What about you?” I asked Coins.
“I’ll be up there,” he said, and nodded toward a narrow second-story balcony on the building facing the sanatorium. “No one’ll notice. Soon as you get that word, you signal me, and we’ll crash his party.”
I grinned. “Sounds like my kind of night.” He turned to go, but I grabbed his arm. “Do me a favor? When I Cloak, can you whistle three times? I can’t see myself as Cloaked and I’m still learning…”
“Sure thing, mate. Whistle three times. Good luck!”
He sauntered across the street, then without any warning he took one swift step and ran five feet up the wall to grab an outcrop of brick. Like an acrobat he launched himself up to a window sill, and never stopping, twisted and leapt to the balcony rail.
I had half a mind to applaud when I saw him vault over the rail to land inside the balcony, but instead I just caught his eye and tipped my fingers to my temple. He grinned and held up both thumbs. I assumed he meant the sign of acknowledgment I’d seen Griff and the other aviators use from their cockpits, and not the obscene gesture I’d heard they used in Istia. But because I was supposedly Istian, I flung both my hands out in mock anger, and mimicked the gesture. He froze, and his eyes widened, then he threw back his head and laughed.
I wandered back toward the iron gate, waiting for a dawdling pedestrian to stroll past. When she’d gone and I was sure that the gate guard wasn’t watching, I sank down on the base of the gate post and concentrated on not being seen. I slowed down my breathing and closed my eyes, and thought about the bricks behind my back, the cobblestones under my boots, the tickle of a fern on my arm. And still no whistle from Coins.
I opened my eyes and looked for Coins on the balcony. He was leaning over the rail, staring at me, but when he met my gaze he just shook his head. A little shred of panic tangled in my thoughts. What if I couldn’t do it? What if I wasn’t a Cloak after all, only rather talented at hiding?
All of a sudden Coins straightened up, his gaze shifting to glance behind me, and I heard the grinding of boots in the loose shale of the sanatorium drive. The fear of discovery was all I needed. I flinched and closed my eyes, and immediately I heard Coins whistle, softly, three times. The gate guard’s footsteps ground louder and louder behind me, stopped, and then shifted away again. I breathed a sigh of relief and opened my eyes. Coins still stood draped over the railing, but his eyes were shifting, uncertain, scanning the area all around me but never quite fixing on my face. I was invisible.
And I sat there for what felt like an hour, never moving, barely breathing, while my muscles turned cold and my head pounded with thirst. When I was beginning to think Coins had guessed wrong about Vanek’s dinner guests, a pair of gentlemen strolled up to the gate, finely dressed in tailored suits and hats and silk scarves that looked utterly out of place in the south streets. One of them lifted his cane and knocked it a few times against the gate, not in any particular pattern, just a three-beat rap.
The gate guard came crunching across the drive. “Beat it! No trespassers!” he shouted.
“But we are welcome,” the man said.
The guard didn’t even slow down, but swept up to the gate and slid back the bolt, and let the two men in. My impulse was to leap out as soon as the men had wandered up the drive, but I waited. Others might be coming, and I wanted to verify that what I’d heard was in fact some kind of pass code. I was rewarded a few moments later when a lady wrapped in a tawny fur approached the gate, and the guard admitted her to the same words.
My muscles were too cramped to wait any longer. As soon as she’d disappeared into the shadows and the gate guard had returned to his post, I scrambled away from the gate and took a few steps down the street. Coins vaulted over the balcony rail and dropped in two stages down the wall.
“Everything jake?” he asked, sauntering across the street toward me.
“Got it. It’s…really, it’s hardly a passcode.”
“Excellent! Now, how do we get him to let us in if he remembers us from before?” Coins asked.
“I can do that,” I said, “but I’m not too sure about you. I’ve got an idea. Lend me your coat?”
Coins glared at me in mock anger but handed it over. I wrapped myself in it and did up the front buttons, though it was so long it almost fell to my ankles. Then, closing my eyes, I focused my mind and my energy. I should be in my thirties, possibly forty. Slicked-back black hair. Blue eyes. Smart mustachio. Maybe a bit of a scar at the corner of my lip…
“Sweet stars,” Coins said. “You just…you just…”
“How do I look? Do I look like a dandy?”
He just stared at me. “Disappearing was one thing but this…this! That’s fantastic!”
“All right, wait here a moment.”
I strolled up to the gate, reminding myself to lose the Shade swagger in favor of the easy grace of someone who’d been raised in etiquette schools…of someone like Tarik. I didn’t have a cane to knock with, so I rapped on one of the bars with my knuckles.
The guard came slowly, calling, “Beat it! No trespassers!”
“But I am welcome,” I said.
He didn’t stop and hardly glanced at me as he slid back the bolt and opened the gate. Once inside I hesitated, debating whether to go back for Coins or leave him there and head on alone. But I must have lingered a moment too long, because the guard paused to peer at me through the shadows.
“What is this business?” he asked.
“Right,” I said. “Hello.”
His hand reached for the gun at his hip, and before I could stop myself, I threw an elbow at his head, grabbed him, and slammed my knee into his chest. He groaned and fell at my feet, and I gave him one last elbow in the back of the skull. His breath escaped in a puff and his face planted into the gravel.
For a few seconds I just stood, breathing hard, hands up by my face, blood and adrenaline burning up my chest. A soft whistle trilled behind me, then a voice, hissing my name. I straightened up, lowering my hands and drawing one long, thin breath, and turned to let Coins in. He crept through the gate and stood a moment staring down at the guard.
“Blimey,” he said. Then he gaped at me as I brought my features back to Shade’s, and said again, “Blimey! You’re a madcap!”
I grinned. “I do my best. Shall we?”
We’d barely arrived at the front steps of the building, when the door swung open and a tall, thin man appeared, silhouetted by gas light, his wispy hair a cloud around his head.
“Who are you?” he asked. “My master said only three guests tonight.”
“We are welcome,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes. “You are not the sort of guest we usually receive.”
I swallowed hard, and, drawing on a lifetime of princely education, I walked straight up to him and speared a hand toward his chest to drive him aside.
“He’ll want to receive us,” I said as I passed him by. As the man turned with me, Coins slipped in and let the door close behind him. “I have information for him.”
“My master—”
“Where can I wait?” I glanced into the room to my left, a sitting room with rich burgundy wallpaper and a pair of low couches. “This looks splendid. We’ll wait in here.” I brushed past him and dropped onto a tawny settee. When the man just stared after me, I waved a hand and said, “Well, go on. I’ve got places to be tonight.”
The man hesitated, then tsked and bustled off. Coins appeared in the doorway, open-mouthed and paralyzed until I waved him in.
“That old duff let you in!” he said, sprawling into th
e other couch. “I can’t believe it. I thought I was good.”
I snorted and leaned my elbows on my knees. “I’m Istian. We don’t wait to be admitted. We admit ourselves.”
He whistled. “Still. If I’d tried it…”
His voice died off with the sound of footsteps in the hall. He straightened up and stared anxiously at the door, but I forced myself to stay still, hands clasped between my knees, eyes on the mantle clock, as if I didn’t care. As if my heart wasn’t hammering like crazy. Because acting for a bunch of slumdogs was one thing, but when it could cost me my life, it was a different matter entirely.
“What is going on here?” a sharp, thin voice asked from the doorway. “Who the devil are you?”
Coins gulped and stared at me; the way he was so nervous, I gathered he didn’t interact directly with people very often. I got to my feet and turned to face Vanek Meed. He was as sharp and thin as his voice, ramrod straight and silver-haired, its sheen stark against the black of his dinner suit. If I didn’t know he was a crook, I would have thought him a proper gentleman, one of the entrepreneurs or inventors so worshipped in high society.
“Vanek Meed,” I said. “I’ve heard you’ve got a problem you need solved.”
“Who are you?” he asked again, coming close and staring me straight in the eye. “What’ve you heard?”
“I heard you’ve got a debt that’s tied your hands. And I want to cut you loose.”
His gaze sharpened, his lips disappearing into thin white lines. “I’ve got dinner guests,” he said. “I’m being terribly rude to them, as are you, boy, for intruding.”
I lifted my hands. “I can wait, if you agree to talk.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t have my man throw you out right now?”
I hesitated on telling him that I’d already introduced his man to the pavement; somehow I imagined it wouldn’t help my case. Instead I said, “Because I don’t think you want me sharing what I know with the world.”
Vanek impressed me. He didn’t turn red, or pale; he didn’t laugh or yell or swear. He just stared at me very calmly, those ice-blue eyes fierce as fire, and finally gave one short nod.
“I’ll talk. After dinner.”
“You won’t invite us to dine with you?” I asked, giving him my most charming smile.
“Don’t press your luck,” he snapped. “Still. Don’t think the kitchen staff would mind you sharing their meal. Wiks will take you down.”
He turned on his heel and strode from the room, signaling to the butler as he went. A moment later the man came and beckoned us with a morose look.
“This way, I suppose,” he said, and led us down into the scullery.
After the best meal I’d had in a week—savory pasties soaked in gravy, with beer and bread, boiled eggs and custard—Vanek Meed summoned me and Coins to his upstairs study. I imagined he must have chosen the room because it was one of the few on the second floor with its windows still intact. Mahogany panels on the walls and warm, steady gas lighting gave it a sumptuous feel, and the massive desk was something even my father might have envied. But the leather on the three chairs looked a bit worn, and the desk sported a few nasty gouges—secondhand stuff, obviously, but designed to impress. I wasn’t.
I slid into one of the chairs in front of the desk and Coins dropped into the other, his eyes darting everywhere, swallowing every bit of detail about the room.
“Now then,” Vanek said, sitting down across from us. “Talk.”
“You live in a sanatorium?” I asked, leaning back to peer out into the empty, sterile corridor. The place gave me the creeps.
“What does my choice of residence have to do with anything?”
“Not a thing at all,” I said. “So, the Bricks.”
He’d been squinting at me with his eyes creased up in thin folds, but at my mention of the Bricks his face dead-panned.
“What about the Bricks?”
“I know you want them gone. I know you can’t deal with them because you’ve got an arrangement with their supplier.” His gaze got colder and colder, confirming that Coins had gotten the story right. I leaned back in my chair and folded my hands behind my head, and left it at that for a good minute. Then I said, “Reckon I could remove that obstacle for you.”
The silence ate away minutes. Outside, the bare branches of a chestnut tree scraped at the window glass, squeaking as the wind picked up. I could have sworn I heard someone sobbing down the hallway, but as soon as I turned my thoughts to it, the sound vanished. I barely repressed a shudder.
“So tell me…” Vanek’s voice trailed off, and he looked at me expectantly.
“Shade.”
“So tell me, Shade, why should I believe a word of what you just said? Even if any of it were true—which, I’m not saying it is—then why would you be so eager to help? Do you owe me something?”
“Not at all.”
He wriggled a finger in his ear and scratched the back of his head, which I figured was the closest he would come to showing discomfort.
“Who’s pawn are you? Who sent you?”
“Don’t belong to anyone,” I said. “And I’m here for myself. Maybe we’ve got a mutual enemy.”
“You in Rivano’s crew?” he asked, gesturing at his face.
I leaned forward a bit, staring him in the eye. “I told you once. I don’t belong to anyone. Not Rivano. Not you. No one but myself.”
He nodded, slowly, his hand itching at the back of his head again. “Then what do you need me for? If Alby Durb’s your enemy too, why’d you come to me first?”
I smiled. “I wanted you to see my face. And I want you to remember my name, and know it was me. That’s all.” I stood and flicked my fingers at my side, beckoning Coins. “Evening, Mr. Meed,” I said, and left the room with Coins on my heels before Vanek could say a word.
Chapter 14 — Hayli
When Pika came running to find me, I was lying on my cot on my stomach, with a cobbled copy of the day’s Herald spread open on my pillow. No news much worth reading, though. The royal family had all gone, and we got no stories of Vissery steam planes or faceless—literally faceless—murder victims this time. There was a bit of a piece about Istia, and something about a summit or some such, but I couldn’t make horns or heads of it.
I was busy with a stump of charcoal, coloring a great big mustachio on the face of some Minister, when Pika bounded up all wide-eyed and speechless. I sat up, tucking the charcoal under my mattress.
“Pika! What’s got your tongue?”
Her hands clenched up in little balls. “He’s back,” she said, then turned and bolted.
“Hey, wait!” I called, but she’d already gone.
He’s back? Shade?
I scrambled off my cot and raced after her, down to the lounge where most of the kids spent the evening hours. It wasn’t a lounge, not really, just a wide warehouse floor that we’d stacked with crates along the walls—crates for chairs, double crates for tables, piles of huge crates for climbing about on. We kept the whole middle of the floor clear for games, but no one was playing now. All the kids had knotted together behind Derrin, who stood with his arms crossed, cold and calm and indifferent.
A minute and we heard a pair of footsteps outside, then Coins sauntered in with a wild-eyed grin. Shade stalked into the room on his heels, wearing Coins’s coat. I held my breath. Something about Shade made everyone goggle at him, following his every move. I couldn’t figure what it was, especially as he had his gaze turned to the ground and wouldn’t look at any of us. Then he stopped and stared straight at Derrin, as if they were the only two people in the room.
“Alby Durb,” he said, and without another word, he turned to leave.
“Wait!” Derrin called. Shade stopped at the door, but didn’t turn around. “Welcome to the Hole.”
A hushed muttering chased through the group. Shade didn’t come back, but nodded once and headed on out the door. I gulped and glanced at Derrin.
“Go on,
Hayli,” he said. “Make sure he’s got a cot and a blanket.”
“Sure,” I said, and ran from the room.
I found Shade up in the front enclosure, standing in a shifty patch of rare moonlight with his head tipped back, contemplating the sky. He must have heard me coming, but he didn’t move a twitch as I got near.
“Derrin told me to—”
“Shh,” he said, holding up his hand. “Listen.”
I stopped beside him and cocked my head to the side, trying to hear whatever he was hearing. After a moment I caught the blare of the nine o’ train whistle, faint with the wind blowing down from the north, sighing in the fir trees beyond the wall. Somewhere down an alley, a couple of toms mewled and howled in a fight.
“What d’you hear?” I whispered, because I didn’t think he was listening to any of those things.
“You don’t hear the music?”
I frowned and listened harder. “What kind of music?”
He shifted and glanced down at me, looking a mite puzzled. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I thought I heard…I thought I heard a voice singing. Maybe just the wind.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, but I knew he didn’t believe it himself. “You got the supplier’s name,” I said then, and added, teasing, “We were supposed to help with that.”
“Sorry, Hayli. Had a chance and I took it. Didn’t have time to bring you on.”
“Coins helped you?”
He smiled. “Yeah. Don’t think I’d have got anywhere without him.”
“Coins is dead canny,” I said, so warmly that he shot me a quick glance. I blushed and said, “I mean, he’s got a mad bent. He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.”
“What’s his job?”
“Stars, what isn’t? He’s a quick-finger and a spy, and he can run buildings like no one else, so he gets sent off on courier jobs all the time.”
“Run buildings?” Shade asked, eyes sparking. “That like how he climbed up to a balcony earlier?”
The Madness Project (The Madness Method) Page 26
