The Conspiracy of Us

by Maggie Hall

  “What now?” I said quickly.

  Jack cleared his throat. “I guess we go to the Hagia Sophia. I would say we wait until morning, but the clock’s ticking. The Saxons don’t care if you’re partying in Istanbul and I’m keeping an eye on you, as long as I—and by extension, you—am back in time to prepare for the ball tomorrow.”

  I adjusted my bag. “So, what you’re saying is that we have twelve hours or so to figure out what Mr. Emerson meant and how it relates to this thing the most powerful people in the world have been trying to find for centuries.”

  Jack ran a hand through his hair. “Right.”

  I blinked. “Then we’d better get going. I’m sure you have connections that could get us in even though it’s the middle of the night, but I was thinking maybe we shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “I was thinking that exact same thing. If anyone in the Circle knew what we were up to, they’d be on us in seconds, and they wouldn’t be happy. But how—”

  I glanced down at my dress. “I have another idea.”

  CHAPTER 23

  We sat at the end of the wide, tulip-lined walk to the Hagia Sophia. The postcard hadn’t done the massive structure justice. It glowed orange gold against the night, its four minarets pointing to the sky like sentries.

  Behind us, its twin, the Blue Mosque, gleamed like a mirror image. With their manicured lawns and palm trees lit from beneath, the scene struck me like something you’d see at Disneyland.

  I wished we were at Disneyland.

  I prodded carefully at the new bandage on my leg. We’d picked up butterfly bandages, painkillers, and flip-flops on our way out of the market, and Jack had shown me how to close the cut, musing that I really would know first aid by the time we were finished. His touch was more tentative on my thigh than it had been on my shoulder earlier.

  Now he checked his watch. “Three thirty-two,” he said, and we watched a pair of security guards stroll past the Hagia Sophia’s front entrance, then continue on their route.

  He sat a careful distance from me—a distance that said he was still thinking about what almost happened in the market, too. I couldn’t help but look at his mouth again. Jack had the kind of mouth that makes you overly aware of your own—full, soft, almost pouting. He caught his lower lip between his teeth, and I pressed my own lips together and turned away.

  The cold of the stone fountain’s edge bled through my thin dress, and I shivered, wrapping my hands around the warm, foil-wrapped kebab we’d bought from a street vendor on the way here. It was hard to think about eating right now, but I hadn’t eaten in forever—since back at home, maybe?—and the incredible smell wafting from the kebab Jack was already eating was making my stomach rumble.

  I started to peel back the foil on mine, but my phone vibrated. I jumped to scoop it out of my bag. I’d assumed my mom would be on a plane until the morning, but I couldn’t stop hoping. It wasn’t her, though. It was Stellan. This was the eighth time he’d called.

  I tossed the phone back into my bag. “Why is Stellan so worried if the Dauphins don’t know who I am?”

  Jack tensed, just like he did every time Stellan’s name came up. It was obvious the two of them had a complicated history.

  “You’re his assignment, even if he thinks you’re just a houseguest,” he said tersely, taking another bite. His white shirt, with its mutilated hem and spices smeared across the chest, looked orange in the streetlight. “He’s in line for a position in Russia if he proves himself. He can’t slip up at all.”

  “Russia? Near his family?”

  An ice cream vendor pushed a cart down the street, tinny music blaring from his speakers.

  “Near his sister. His parents are dead.”

  Stellan hadn’t mentioned that. The more I learned about the Circle and the Keepers, though, the more I wasn’t surprised he didn’t have a normal, happy childhood. He’d clearly thought about the concept of toska way before we met. Something’s missing, he’d said. You ache for it down to your bones.

  I could tell Jack didn’t want to talk about Stellan, but I couldn’t help asking how his parents died.

  “There was a gas leak, and their building blew up. Stellan and his sister survived,” Jack said. “That’s why he came to the Circle later than usual . . . Long story.”

  Wow. That was awful.

  “Was it the Order?”

  Jack shook his head. “Accident.”

  “Why do you hate the Order so much?” I said. It had been weighing on me since Mr. Emerson’s apartment. Jack had looked ready to rip someone’s head off with his bare hands. That was more than anger over Mr. Emerson.

  Jack rubbed a hand over his face. “Alistair Saxon wasn’t meant to be head of the Saxon family. His older brother was. Almost twenty years ago, the Order killed him and their father, and it caused a lot of upheaval. The Saxons’ animosity toward them is . . . special. Even before the recent attacks.”

  So Jack had been trained to hate the Order. And it wasn’t unjustified.

  We sat in silence for a minute. Finally Jack took another bite of his food, and I followed suit. My eyes fluttered shut in ecstasy at the spicy lamb and warm flatbread and the creamy, minty sauce. I’d had no idea I was this hungry.

  “How long have you been with the Saxons?” I asked, taking another bite.

  Jack finished his kebab and folded his foil wrapper in half, and in half again. He didn’t answer for a second, and I wiped my fingers on a napkin. Maybe this was an off-limits topic.

  He unfolded the piece of foil and cleared his throat. “I’ve been with the Saxons from age four.”

  I stared at him. I should have assumed it had been a while—he would have been about ten when Mr. Emerson started giving me Charlie updates—but the thought of the Circle training little kids shocked me. Especially training them to be Keepers. I’d seen Stellan kill someone, and the way Jack handled a gun made it clear he was very comfortable with it, which I didn’t like to think about. Their training obviously involved a lot more than a kid should be exposed to. “Four years old?”

  “Yes.” Jack stared straight ahead, elbows on his knees. The breeze rustled the palm trees.

  “Why . . . ?” I trailed off, already regretting the question. Whatever the answer was, it couldn’t be good.

  “My mother died giving birth to me. My father gave me up.” He must have anticipated my next question. “It’s good money, and my father never wanted kids anyway.”

  I opened my mouth, and closed it again.

  Jack sat up straight, and wiped at a spot of blood on his shirt. My blood. Again. “Everyone who works for the families is related to them. Usually in-laws . . . not in the direct bloodline. Enough for us to have an ingrained loyalty, but not enough to make it inappropriate to be employed by them,” he said, like he had to justify his life to me. Explain choices he didn’t even make for himself.

  “You don’t have to feel sorry for me,” he said defensively, even though I hadn’t said anything. He crushed the foil in his fist. “I’ve never wanted for anything.”

  I choked down a bite of lamb that had gone dry in my mouth. If he really believed that, he’d led an even sadder, lonelier life than I had.

  “Saxon took me in when no one else wanted me,” he said. “He’s the closest thing to a father I have. Him and Fitz. But it’s enough.”

  He stood and crossed to a nearby trash can. I watched his back.

  Jack was so confident, and strong, and mature, and if you didn’t look closely, there was nothing about him to suggest the little boy he used to be. But I could see it. It was in his eyes or in the set of his shoulders. In those rare seconds when he was less guarded, there was something a little lost.

  “I’ve never had a father,” I said when he came back. “I don’t even know what it’s like to kind of have one.”


  “You don’t know anything about him at all?” Jack said after a second. “You haven’t seen a photo?”

  I grasped my locket. “One picture, but it’s really old and fuzzy.” I sat up straighter. “He seemed to look kind of like me. Dark hair, dark brows. Do any of them look like that?”

  Jack rubbed his jaw with one thumb. “I don’t know. I mean, most of them have dark hair.”

  I bottled up the thoughts of my dad and put them away. I’d let my desperation to know something about him override my good judgment once, when I said yes to coming to France, and I wasn’t going to let it happen again. And right now, my good judgment still said to help Mr. Emerson, then get as far away from the Circle as I could, as fast as I could, whether I’d figured out who he was or not.

  Jack checked his watch again and glanced from the guards, to the other side of the plaza, to a group of drunk tourists meandering in the street. Occasionally, spray from the fountains misted our backs.

  The duo of bored-looking guards crossed in front of us again, then disappeared around the side of the building. Like clockwork, another guard strolled to the front doors, said a few words to the sentry posted there, and continued on his rounds. If our calculations were correct, this would mean the door guard would be alone for the next thirteen minutes.

  “Ready?” Jack said.

  I nodded and put on his sunglasses. The gold-rimmed Aviators were way too big for my face, which was perfect.

  Jack stood and marched toward the doors. After a minute, the guard peered around him at me, and I held my breath. We were counting on an American pop star being famous enough all over the world for this random security guard to recognize her.

  Jack waved me over. Heart knocking against my rib cage, I walked up to the doors, feeling very, very small as I took in how big the building really was. I tried not to show it. Krissy Silver would think she was entitled to be here. She had had six number one Billboard hits last year alone—or at least, that’s what they said at the awards show where she wore this dress. Elodie had said I looked like her, and it was true enough—Stellan probably would have called her a porcelain doll, too. I could only hope the guard agreed. I thrust my shoulders back and put a bored, haughty look on my face.

  The guard peered at me dubiously from behind unruly brows that hung down into his eyes. I gave him a condescending smile.

  Jack told him in Turkish that I was only in town for the night, and that I was very religious and wanted to see some of the Christian frescoes. “You can let us in, can’t you?” I said, batting my eyelashes until I realized he couldn’t see them behind the sunglasses. I didn’t look enough like her to take them off.

  Jack translated, and the guard responded gruffly, scratching his mustache. I held my breath. The guard reached into his pocket.

  I grabbed Jack’s arm, ready to run, but he put a steadying hand over mine and nodded to the guard’s hand. A cell phone.

  “He wants a picture for his daughter,” Jack said. “And an autograph.”

  I let out a breath through my teeth, and smiled nervously for the photo. We’d be long gone by the time his daughter told him I was a fake.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said pointedly. Jack spoke to the guard, and he unlocked the doors.

  I shivered as we stepped over the threshold. As warm as the night was, the inside of the building was cold in that way stone structures sometimes are, like they don’t want to let warmth in.

  The guard followed us. That wasn’t part of the plan.

  His excited chatter echoed in the cavernous space, and Jack shrugged hopelessly and translated. When Istanbul was sacked by Sultan Mehmed in the fifteenth century, he was so awestruck by the Hagia Sophia that, rather than destroying it, he converted what had been a church into a mosque. Since it became a museum in the 1930s, restorations had uncovered some of the Christian murals that had been plastered over with Islamic art, so both were represented.

  We crossed the threshold into the central room, and my eyes were drawn upward. As huge as the Hagia Sophia looked from the outside, it was nothing compared with the inside. The dome was so high above us, and so wide open, I felt dizzy. The largest cathedral in the world for almost a thousand years, the guard said.

  Like the rest of Istanbul, you could tell it was a crossroads. The spears of moonlight through the windows glinted off a mural of Jesus edged in gold leaf, and above it, giant circular medallions adorned with golden Arabic letters looked too new and modern in the ancient building, like someone had Photoshopped them on. I pushed my sunglasses onto the top of my head to get a better look at a second story running along the sides of the main nave, barely visible through high archways.

  The guard turned back around and I smiled at him, but he frowned.

  My sunglasses. I shoved them back onto my face, but his hand was already moving to his radio. In a blink, Jack had his hand to the guard’s neck. He crumpled to the floor.

  “What did you do?” I whispered.

  Jack lowered him to the floor. “Nothing permanent. He’ll wake up with a headache in ten minutes. Let’s go.”

  Without the guard’s voice, it was eerily quiet, making the empty space seem even more cavernous. I slipped out of my flip-flops and dangled them from my fingers so they wouldn’t clap against the floor and give us away, and we hurried along the dark edge of the museum.

  “So what is Fitz’s curated collection?” Even my whisper seemed to echo.

  “He must have put together some pieces. Here.” Jack stopped by an information board listing the current exhibitions. “First floor . . . Ming Dynasty Bronzes. Probably not.”

  I ran my finger down the board to keep my place in the low light. “Art deco, Japanese calligraphy . . .”

  “What about that one?” Jack said over my shoulder, and his breath stirred my hair. My neck tingled, and I ignored it.

  “France in the Napoleonic Era? Seems more like we’d be looking for ancient Greek stuff.”

  “Look.” Jack reached across me to point at the board, just below where I’d been looking.

  “Curated by volunteer docent Emerson Fitzpatrick.” I scanned the rest of the listing. “North gallery.”

  CHAPTER 24

  We ran by the passed-out guard and up a wide, dark flight of stairs. I stumbled, and Jack grabbed my arm to steady me, and then his hand traveled down to mine and closed around it.

  “Would he really have left something important in such a public place?” I whispered. I turned my hand to meet his and our fingers threaded together, a warm spot in the dark. Our footsteps synced as we ran up the steps.

  “If it’s something the Circle’s interested in, leaving it in plain sight might be the best way to hide it,” Jack whispered. “They’ve already checked the collections of every known museum in the world. He could have slipped something new in after they checked this one. It’s genius, actually.”

  “If we can figure out which thing from the collection he’s talking about.” A faint light shone ahead, and we emerged on the secondstory balcony I’d seen from the ground. I took my hand back, and it felt cold. “They’re looking for other stuff about the mandate, right? Like, other books?”

  “Or artwork with a new mandate or something more about this one inscribed on it . . . It could be anything. And for all we know, this is something different from the mandates entirely.”

  Jack nodded his head left, and I went right. The only illumination was moonlight streaming in from the windows overhead, so I had to lean close to see what was in the glass case on each pillar and on the matching informative plaque. A porcelain bust, a decorative plate, a necklace.

  “Anything?” Jack’s whisper echoed in the quiet.

  “No.” After the next few pieces, I let out a frustrated sigh. “How are we supposed to know—” I stopped short.

  On the next plaque, in the bottom right corner, was something that hadn�
�t been on any of the others. “What the . . .”

  Jack hurried across the room, his steps hushed.

  “What?” he whispered. He leaned close, studying the thick gold band on a pillar under the glass. But it wasn’t the bracelet I was interested in.

  “That symbol,” I said.

  He squinted at the plaque, and I remembered something. I still had my house keys in my bag, and a tiny key-chain flashlight on them. That would have been useful this whole time.

  “What is it?” Jack said again. In response, I plucked my locket from my chest. I shone the light on it, then on the plaque.

  There, on the plaque for item J-13, Copper Bracelet, was the symbol from my locket. I’d always thought it looked like a Celtic knot, but I’d never seen this exact one anywhere else—until now.

  Jack took the locket from my hand. “Where’d you get this?”

  “My mom gave it to me when I was little,” I whispered.

  He let the locket fall back to my chest, then grabbed the flashlight and shone it on the bracelet. It was encrusted with jewels in the shape of some kind of winged creatures, and—

  “An inscription,” he whispered. “That has to be it.”

  What Mr. Emerson was expecting us to do with a bracelet, I wasn’t sure, but if there was an inscription, we’d probably find out. “Okay, how are we going to get it?”

  “It’ll be alarmed,” Jack said, circling the pillar.

  I looked inside. I didn’t see any trip wires. “See anything?” I said.

  Jack checked the next pillar over. “This one has an obvious security setup. Maybe Fitz left the bracelet without an alarm on purpose.”

  I glanced in the direction of the stairs, expecting a guard’s boots to come clomping up them at any moment. “Try it?”

  Jack nodded.

  I grabbed the foot-wide cube of glass.