The Madness Project (The Madness Method)

by Bralick, J. Leigh

  “Don’t you dare try to stand up to me, boy,” Kantian growled.

  The smile vanished from Shade’s face, and my blood turned icy cold. “You’re not the most powerful man I’ve ever stood up to,” he said.

  “Shade!” I cried. “You dan’ have to do this.”

  He turned and met my gaze as two of the toughs came and grabbed him by the arms. He didn’t pitch any kind of struggle. His eyes held mine a moment longer, then he turned away. But he stood a little straighter, and his face grew a little colder.

  “This is what he wanted all along,” he said, to me. Then, to Kantian, “Isn’t it?”

  “How many different sides have you been playing, Shade?” Kantian asked. “How many backs have you stabbed so far?”

  I held my breath, but Shade gave a smile that looked more like a snarl. “One too few, apparently,” he said.

  “You all think he was your friend?” Kantian cried, talking at all the skitters. “You have no idea what kind of traitor this kid is. How brazen he’s been about betraying all of you. The closer he pretended to be to you, the worse he betrayed you. And now Bugs is dead because of him. Don’t you think he deserves to be punished?”

  Shade’s face went perfectly still, but it scared me worse than all the anger he’d shown earlier. I half-expected the skitters to take up Kantian’s rallying cry and call for Shade’s blood, but they didn’t. They just stared at Kantian, at the men twisting Shade’s arms behind him, at Shade cold and calm and unmoved. I shivered and clutched my hands on my bare arms.

  “Chain him up,” Kantian snapped.

  The men shoved him against the pillar, dragging his hands forward so they could manacle them to the ring on top of it. Soon as he was tied up, Kantian unhooked the lash from his belt. One of the toughs grabbed Shade’s shirt and ripped it from his shoulders.

  Half the skitters screamed when the first lash fell. I couldn’t. I flinched, but couldn’t tear my gaze from his back, his undershirt and skin all split from shoulder blade to hip. When the second blow struck, I saw Jig jerk away from the wall, hands balled in fists. One of the toughs noticed him too, and flashed his gun at him to ward him back. Jig’s face turned terribly pale, every muscle in him strained to breaking, like a spring stretched too far. Anuk grabbed him by the shoulder.

  A gasp of pain dragged my attention back to Shade. His whole back was a bloody mess, and he sagged against the pillar, his feet slipping in the pool of his own blood. My stomach churned.

  “Kantian!” I cried, my voice breaking. “Kantian, stop, please! You’re ganna kill him!”

  “Let him go,” Derrin said. “This is madness.”

  Kantian paused just long enough to turn and glare at me. “Do you want to take his place?”

  My gaze flashed to Shade, almost expecting him to make some kind of sharp come-back, but he’d sunk to his knees, his head pressed against the rough stone of the pillar. All the words died on my lips, and I stared, and stared, waiting to see him turn and smile at me, or just to see his shoulders lift in a breath, but he didn’t move at all.

  “Shade!” I screamed. Nothing. “You killed him! You killed him, you—”

  “It would take more than a lashing to kill that boy.”

  We all spun around that time. Rivano stood at the edge of the crowd, Scorch and Shiver and a handful of other mages in a close knot behind him. Finally, finally Shade’s head twitched, just enough that he could get a glimpse of the Clan Master. A little sadness tugged my heart, because soon as he saw him, he closed his eyes with the ghost of a weary kind of smile.

  “You said you would stay out of the Hole’s affairs if I stayed out of the Clan’s,” Kantian said.

  “But you haven’t stayed out of the Clan’s affairs,” Rivano said, stepping closer. “You tried to use that boy to sully the Clan’s name with your anarchist crimes, didn’t you? Tried to manipulate us so that we’d have to stand with you against the king’s men? But I’m afraid the Clan wants nothing to do with your war.”

  “You wanted it as much as I did!” Kantian cried.

  Rivano’s eyes darkened. “A war,” he said. “Not your war.”

  One of the toughs raised his gun. I think I shouted something, but Scorch moved faster than anyone, his hand flashing out in a blaze of light. The gunman swore and jerked his hand back, the revolver crashed to the ground, gleaming red like a furnace.

  “Call off this nonsense now, before anyone else gets hurt,” Rivano said. “Unchain that mage and walk away.”

  “Do you have any idea who he is? What he’s done?”

  Rivano shrugged, looking unimpressed. “Do you?”

  “That boy is a traitor!”

  “There’s a traitor here, I’m sure,” Rivano remarked. “I just don’t believe it’s him.” His gaze shifted to me, and he lifted a hand to beckon me over. “Hayli, come.”

  The tough let me go. I stood ashamed, because I knew if I so much as twitched the wrong way, Rivano would see that clockwork tattoo on my neck. But he kept gesturing me to join him, so I bit my lip and lifted my chin, and walked quietly toward him. To my relief, he switched his attention back to Shade and Kantian before I reached him.

  “Let him go,” he said. “I’m not asking again.”

  “You’ve got five mages with you. You’re outnumbered.”

  “Perhaps.”

  The word had barely left Rivano’s lips when Derrin stirred, and came to join us.

  “Derrin?” Kantian asked, face turning a bit red. “What’re you doing? You’re supposed to be working for me.”

  Derrin smiled. “That’s what you thought.”

  “He never worked for you,” Rivano said.

  I stifled a gasp and Kantian’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t get a chance to retort, because suddenly Jig and Anuk went streaming after Derrin.

  “Stay where you are!” Kantian cried, face red.

  Jig shot him a smug kind of look and stopped beside Derrin, arms folded.

  Coins slipped around behind Kantian and, faster than I could follow, slipped the lock on Shade’s manacles. Soon as the chain fell free, Shade collapsed. I watched, heart in my throat, as Coins looped an arm around him and hauled him to his feet. Somehow he was still awake, barely, his eyes shifting listlessly over the crowd.

  “Get him inside,” Rivano said to Coins. “I have a feeling he’ll be on his feet again in a few minutes.”

  “All you lot, scram,” Kantian snapped at the crowd of skitters. “Nothing more to see out here.”

  They stared at him wide-eyed, then, without so much as a peep, they turned and shuffled into the Hole. Coins waited until the kids had all gotten inside, then Anuk went and helped him haul Shade across the enclosure. One by one the rest of the folks moved away. Kantian snapped and snarled at his toughs, until they slunk away like kicked mutts, and then he disappeared inside too.

  “Dan’ you let him back in there!” I cried. “Kantian’s a traitor. He’ll get us all killed!”

  “I’d like to see him try,” Jig said, his voice dangerously low, and he stormed off toward the Hole.

  “Jig, wait,” I called. “Be careful! You can’t stop him alone.”

  But he didn’t even slow down. I gritted my teeth and turned to follow him, but Rivano held up his hand suddenly.

  “Hayli,” he said.

  I jumped. My name ground out on a knife’s edge, jagged and sharp, and everything inside me wilted up. I swallowed hard.

  “Yes, Master?”

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered, and, biting my lip hard, I faced away from him.

  “What is that on your neck?”

  I dragged in a shattered breath, shivering as the wind tore over me. “I dan’ na. I dan’ na what it is.”

  “So,” he said. “They did get to you. And I suppose you’ve been taking our secrets to them?”

  “What, who?” I cried. “I’ve not told anyone’s secrets to anybody! I’m not a traitor!”

  “Maybe not
intentionally.” I turned around, flinching as I saw the anger black in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Hayli. If they’ve gotten to you, then I cannot trust you.”

  I gritted my teeth, knotting my hands, wanting to fight. “But I haven’t done anything! I dan’ understand. What do you think I’ve done?”

  “I think you’ve only done what you believed was right. You may not even remember doing anything. But that does not mean that you did no wrong. We cannot let you stay. You put everyone here in danger.”

  “But—” I clacked my jaws shut. For all I wanted to wage war on the universe just then, and for all Rivano was trying to sever me from everything I’d ever known, I couldn’t argue with him. Arguing was weak. But stars, if I didn’t feel weak just then. “What am I supposed to do?”

  He tried a smile. “You’re a smart girl, Hayli. I’m sure you will manage.”

  He took a step back, then turned to walk away, leaving my heart and all the world breaking. “Wait!” I cried, just before he got to the steps. I could barely speak. “Please. Do I have to gan away now?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Now. You’ll understand why, of course. Kantian thought you’d betrayed us to Branigan. He didn’t know the truth, that you’ve betrayed us to the Ministry.”

  But I haven’t… I thought, then asked the crow, I haven’t, have I?

  Not that I recall, she said, sadly. But I’m not sure I would be able to, if they’ve trapped your mind.

  “Master,” I said. “You’ve got to listen to me. Kantian betrayed us to the Ministry. I saw him talking to one of the scientists. And he must be teamed up with Branigan, too. There’s no other way he would have known…”

  “We’ll deal with Kantian, don’t worry,” he said. “Now go.”

  I stared after Rivano as he slipped away down the steps. The door settled behind him with a heavy finality, leaving me standing all alone in the cold.

  I didn’t really have any belongings to claim. I was wearing almost everything I owned. But Shade was in there somewhere, his body one great laceration, all on account of me. I couldn’t stop thinking how he’d pretended to be a traitor to save my life, when the irony of it all was that I had betrayed Kantian to Branigan, to save his.

  Chapter 7 — Tarik

  I was awake, but in darkness. Darkness and a fleeting sense of pain. Confusion. I’d been walking for so long on the shore of the midnight sea, and now the waves were receding. I could still hear them. Hear the pulse of the water…my pulse…the pulse of blood.

  I felt hands on my shoulders, holding me down or still, I couldn’t say, but when I fought to sit up, they supported me.

  “Coins,” I said. My voice rasped, hoarse. “Coins!”

  “I’m here, Shade,” he said, his hand tightening on my left shoulder. “You jake, mate?”

  I shook my head, but the shadows pressed around me, hard and relentless. My head splintered with a piercing ache, and somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I heard the faint refrains of the song that had been haunting my dreams for the last month.

  “I can’t see,” I said.

  I moved my hands over the rough fibers of a blanket, feeling the sharp edge of a cot beneath me. Slowly the song faded, drowning in a rush of chattering voices coming from all around me.

  “Give yourself a minute,” Anuk said.

  “Where’s Hayli?”

  Silence. I twitched my head, trying to clear the blindness, but nothing happened.

  “Coins! Where’s Hayli?”

  “Jig, go see if you can find her. Think she was talking to Rivano.”

  I felt Anuk’s hand tighten on my other arm. “She was talking to Rivano? Up there, just now?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  The hand flew from my arm, and I listened to the sound of his boots storming away, then Jig’s lighter tread following after. I pressed my hands against my eyes and slowly, slowly my vision brightened until I could just make out Coins’s blurry form kneeling beside me. Only one light was burning in the barracks, so I couldn’t distinguish much else besides him.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I haven’t got the faintest,” Coins said. He dropped his voice to a whisper and said, “Look, you’ve got a contact in the palace, right?”

  I just fixed a scowl in the place I assumed his face was.

  “You were out after Rivano showed, weren’t you?”

  I struggled to remember. Rivano? Somehow I thought I could recall a dark, hazy figure standing behind Hayli, but nothing more. It would figure, my first time actually seeing Rivano, I had to be on the brink of collapse.

  “I wasn’t out,” I said. “But I don’t remember any of it.”

  “There’s been a fall-out. Kantian and Rivano. People are taking sides…it’s getting ugly.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said.

  I could see his face a little more clearly, now. The corner of his mouth twitched, almost like a wince. “Does your contact ever give you information, or does he just take it?”

  I dropped my head in my hands. “Sometimes he gives me information. Sometimes. Listen, Coins, I was only supposed to find out about the murders. There are folks who think the Clan was behind them, so that’s what I was supposed to learn. That, and the assassination attempt. I never wanted any more than that. I wasn’t giving information about—”

  “Don’t talk, Shade,” he said, moving to sit on the cot beside me. “Told you once, I don’t care. Here’s the thing. I think Kantian’s the one we need to be worried about, right? He’s playing some game behind Rivano’s back that I think Hayli found out about.”

  “I have to talk to Hayli.”

  “Except you can’t,” Anuk said.

  I squinted through the shadows, just barely making out Anuk and Jig’s silhouettes as they made their way toward us.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s ganned away,” Jig said.

  “What d’you mean, gone?” Coins asked. “That’s not like Hayli. That’s more like, well, you,” he added, punching my arm.

  I winced and rubbed the spot, then absently reached back and touched the shredded remains of my shirt. The skin underneath stung, but it was whole. Touching it, though, sent a bolt of icy pain chasing through me, and I snatched my hand away.

  “Say that again.”

  “She ain’t anywhere. I looked everywhere. Not the barracks, not the mess, not the lounge…not even that nasty park she likes to sit by.”

  I pushed myself to my feet, swallowing bile. “I have to find her.”

  “Shade, hold on a tick. There’s something you need to know,” Anuk said. I stopped, glad to give myself a moment to find my balance, and waved at him to continue. “She has a mark.”

  “So?” Jig asked. “Ain’t that a magey thing to do?”

  “Yeah, except…it’s clockwork. Metal gears on the back of her neck. I saw it. But she was scared to death of Rivano finding out about it. Except I think that now he has, and that’s why she’s gone.”

  I stared at Anuk, speechless, cold horror prickling over me. All I could see was that metallic gleam of wheels and pinions marking Kor’s spine, and the way he hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

  We all jumped when Derrin stepped out of the shadows, saying, “She got taken by the Science Ministry about a month back.”

  “Derrin! Where’ve you been?” Anuk cried.

  “Off on a wild chase, that’s where,” Derrin said, carefully rolling up the cuffs of his sleeves. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. You’re right, I think Kantian’s playing two sides here, and Hayli had proof of it. But Rivano drove Hayli away because he thinks she’s been compromised.”

  “By the Science Ministry?” I asked. “What would they have done to her?”

  “They’ve been taking mages for months now. I don’t know what for, except the ones who come back are different somehow. I think they play with their minds. Given the right influences, they can make mages do anything, it seems.”

  “Keyed!” Coins cried. “Those boffins
can do all kinds of messed up things to people’s minds, right? Make them do things, respond to code phrases, that sort of business. Not sure how they make it work, but that’s what folks call it. Keyed. If they’re doing that to mages… Stars.”

  I let out my breath in a hiss. Hayli had been right—the Ministry was targeting mages. And she’d been one of their experiments. Hayli…and Kor. If they’d been keyed the way Coins was suggesting, I couldn’t even imagine what they were doing. What information they might get and who they might give it to… What a nightmare. I’d been trusting information to Kor all along under the assumption that I could trust him. I couldn’t imagine that Trabin knew Kor had been compromised.

  I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose. For a few minutes I didn’t move, then I became aware of the silence around me and lifted my head. All of them were watching me. Even Derrin. They ringed around me, curious, maybe expectant.

  “What are you all looking at me for?” I asked, dropping my hands.

  Derrin said, “What do we do?”

  I straightened up and met his gaze, but he didn’t even blink. He really meant it. They were looking to me, after all I’d done, after all the chaos I’d caused. I wondered what had ever made them so foolish.

  “We’ve got to find Hayli,” I said. “But…even if we can’t find her, I think I know what’s going on. Kantian’s been feeding you lot anarchist fairy tales, hasn’t he? He’s been trying to stir you up, turn you into a proper rebel band, wanting to overthrow the King and his Ministers. I’ve heard you lot talking about it.”

  They exchanged glances, and Anuk said, “Yeah. You never seemed to keen on the notion, did you?”

  “No offense, but there’s just a handful of you. You want to change how things work around here? You need to look elsewhere. There’s a bigger battle coming, and I think Kantian’s completely out of his depth. He has no notion what he’s doing, but he’s going to get a lot of people killed if he keeps trying to co-opt Rivano’s work.”

  Derrin’s brows drew together, but he didn’t say anything. He watched me so curiously, though, that I got a little nervous. Had I given myself away? Years of training in political thought had taken their toll on me; I knew I didn’t think about things the way other kids my age did.