by P. G. Bell
“House rules,” said Neoma, pausing outside it. “You will not speak to any of the personnel on the other side of this door. You will not touch or otherwise interfere with any of the equipment you see. We take our security very seriously.”
“Then why are we allowed in at all?” said Suzy.
“A good question,” said Neoma. “But I don’t second-guess His Lordship’s orders. I just follow them.”
They all fell into step behind her as the door swung open, and she marched them inside.
“Wow,” Suzy breathed, staring around at the rows of desks, the elaborate domed ceiling, and the Great Spyglass on its dais in the center. “It really does look like an observatory.”
The observers had all turned from their desks to watch the group’s progress as Neoma cut across the center of the room, around the base of the Great Spyglass, to the curator’s office. She knocked and waited for the muffled “Come in,” before ushering Suzy, Stonker, and Ursel inside. The rest of the guards took up positions outside the door.
“Lord Meridian,” Neoma said, saluting. “As per your orders, I have—”
“Suzy Smith.” A small old man in a gray suit rose from the leather armchair in which he had been sitting. Ignoring Neoma, he took Suzy by the hand and shook it. His skin felt cool and dry as old paper. “It’s so nice to see you in the flesh. You’ve had quite a time of it, my dear, quite a time, but here you are at last. Welcome.” He released her. “And J. F. Stonker, driver of the Impossible Postal Express.” He shook Stonker’s shackled hand as well. “Congratulations on outrunning that cave-in. A first for any locomotive, unless I’m very much mistaken. Which I’m not.”
“Oh,” said Stonker, pleasantly perplexed by the whole experience. “Thank you very much.”
“Perhaps now you can let go of the guilt of your rather shabby past.” Lord Meridian smiled and released Stonker’s hand, letting the troll recoil, open-mouthed with shock.
“How do you know…?” Stonker croaked. But Lord Meridian had already moved on to Ursel, resting a hand on her uninjured paw.
“And a locomotive is nothing without its firewoman, of course,” he said. “You’re a credit to your species, and your employer, Ursel. And doing it all with a broken heart, no less.”
Ursel shook herself free of the old man’s touch and bared her fangs in a snarl.
“Please don’t think me discourteous,” said Lord Meridian, turning his back on her. “But I’ve been admiring the efforts of the Impossible Postal Express from afar for quite some time now, and I feel as though I know you all rather well. Better than you know one another, perhaps.”
He perched on the edge of his desk. “Of course, I’ve spent so much time looking out into the Union when I should probably have paid closer attention to what was happening right under my nose. Isn’t that right, Frederick?”
Frederick gave an anxious little squeak as Neoma plucked him from Suzy’s grasp and handed him over.
“Please, sir,” he cried. “I’ll give you the information back. Just let me go. I’ll do anything!”
“I don’t doubt it.” Meridian set Frederick down on the desk. “That’s the trouble with hiring the morally flexible. They make excellent observers, but incorrigible traitors. I really should have seen it coming.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“So it’s true?” said Suzy. “You’ve been spying on the Union?”
“I’ve been observing it,” said Meridian. “You see, as keeper of the Ivory Tower, I have an obligation to gather knowledge for the improvement of the Impossible Places, and what better way to gather that knowledge than to study them directly? The more I know, the more improvements I can make, and I know more than anyone. I alone can see the big picture.” He raised his cane and pointed past them, through the window overlooking the Observatory. “That’s what all this is for—amassing the pieces of the big picture and putting them together, in here.” He tapped himself on the forehead. “Speaking of which, I believe you brought a piece of it for me yourself. Captain?”
Neoma had confiscated Fletch’s wand and the Fact of Entry in the elevator, and now handed them over. Meridian took the wand between a finger and thumb.
“You were planning to restore Frederick with this?” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Dear me, no. It’s not compatible with a transfiguration spell at all. It would be like playing the violin with a hammer.” He gave an exaggerated shudder at the prospect and tossed the wand onto his desk before turning his attention to the Fact of Entry.
“Ah yes,” he said. “Mr. Trellis’s encounter at the Mountains of Madness. Very intriguing.” He pressed the NeuroGlobe to his forehead and closed his eyes. Suzy watched as the clockwork inside the glass began turning more quickly, and the ribbon of red energy zipped around between them. There was a quick pulse of red light from the depths of the globe, and Lord Meridian smiled. “Very intriguing indeed,” he said. “I can see why he was so tempted to accept the offer.”
The clockwork slowed, and he opened his eyes again before dropping the sphere into his jacket pocket. “Excellent. We don’t have this in the archive, and a new fact is always to be welcomed. My thanks.”
“I don’t want your thanks,” said Suzy.
“Of course not. You want something in return.” He crossed to the bookcase behind his desk and pulled down a large, leather-bound volume. Suzy didn’t have to read the gold-embossed title to know what it said: Harmful Spells and How to Break Them. “I have very few moral obligations as keeper of the tower, but fair exchange of knowledge is one of them. It’s something of a sacred duty.”
“Please, Suzy,” piped up Frederick. “Just do as he says. I want to be me again.”
“You’ll find everything you need on page seventy-six,” said Meridian, passing her the book. “I’ll even lend you my own wand, as a favor.” Suzy ran her fingers over the cover, but some instinct warned her not to open it. “Go on,” prompted Meridian. “You did make the boy a promise, after all.”
Suzy felt a cold chill steal over her skin. “You’ve been watching me, too?”
“Of course. You’ve been caring for Frederick, and I didn’t dare let him out of my sight once I’d found him again. He knows too much.”
“You mean he knows what you’re really doing here,” said Suzy.
Meridian fixed her with eyes as cold as moonlight. “Does he, now?”
“No, I don’t!” said Frederick. “Don’t listen to her!”
Suzy glared at him. Why was he trying to lie again now? “He told me everything,” she said. “You’re not watching the Impossible Places. You’re just watching their leaders. And I think I know why.”
“She doesn’t!” said Frederick. “Honest. She doesn’t know what she’s saying!”
“Do tell,” said Meridian, ignoring him.
“I think you’re doing it to take control,” she said. “You can make the leaders do anything you like—because you know their most valuable secrets, all their plans and weaknesses. You don’t even need an army, because you can control everything from here. The leaders will work for you in secret, and nobody will even realize it.”
For a moment, the room was silent. Then Neoma spoke, very quietly.
“My lord, is this true?”
“Of course not, Captain.” He dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “You should know better than to believe such nonsense.”
This did nothing to remove the troubled look from Neoma’s face, however. Her eyes strayed to the window and the desks outside it. “Yes, sir, but maybe we need more transparency. We’re watching five hundred Impossible Places at once, and nobody but you really knows what we’re learning. And then there’s all the meetings you’ve been holding. What if we—”
She was interrupted by a squeal from her radio, and a panicked voice broke out of it. “Intruders in the library! We’re under attack! I repeat, we’re under—” The voice was lost amid a rending of wood, which was itself drowned out by a deep, unearthly bellow that Suzy knew all too well and
that set the hairs on her arms on end.
“Oh no,” she murmured. “They followed us.”
Captain Neoma, meanwhile, unshouldered her rifle. “Looks like I’m going to get that fight after all,” she said with a grim smile. “Crepuscula’s here.”
31
A TRUTH FOR A TRUTH
Lord Meridian’s face darkened as a distant explosion rocked the tower, shaking a fall of dust from the ceiling. “Captain? I thought you’d tripled the perimeter patrols.”
“I did, sir. Right up until you told me we had nothing left to worry about.”
More sounds of destruction crackled through the radio, and another explosion shook books from the shelves.
“A rare miscalculation on my part,” he said. “I didn’t think Crepuscula would continue her pursuit once the tunnel collapsed.”
“Your orders, sir?” Neoma sounded impatient.
“Fight her off, of course,” he said. “She clearly wants control of the Observatory. She cannot be allowed to have it.”
Neoma gave him an appraising stare, and for a second Suzy thought she might refuse the order. But then Neoma flicked a switch on the side of her rifle, and it hummed to life with a buzz of energy. “Yes, sir.” She kicked the office door open and led the waiting guards away at a run, although she spared a second to glance back at Suzy. Her look of doubt hadn’t fled entirely, and Suzy now felt it reflected in her own face. Something was wrong. Not the secret dictator and his insidious spy program, or the army of evil statues that was probably about to kill them all. This was something else, something that didn’t quite fit with what she already knew. That itch in her brain was back again.
Meridian made a quick gesture in the air with his cane, and the door swung shut by itself. “This really is very troubling,” he said.
“Why?” said Frederick. “Don’t you think the Lunar Guard can win?”
“I was talking about the four of you,” said Meridian. “You’re far too well informed, despite young Frederick’s best efforts to keep the whole truth to himself.” He looked to Suzy. “You really should have believed him when he told you some things are too dangerous to know. Now something will have to be done about it.”
“Wait,” said Stonker, looking the old man in the face for the first time since they had shaken hands. “D’you mean to say that Suzy’s story is true? You’re going to take control of the Union’s leaders?”
“Not ‘going to,’” Lord Meridian said. “I already control them.”
“But that’s appalling!”
Meridian shrugged. “Somebody has to do it.”
“No, they don’t,” said Stonker. “And even if they did, why should it be you?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” said Meridian. “I know best.”
Suzy couldn’t detect any hint of malice or mockery in his voice, but it didn’t make his words any less disturbing. Stonker looked equally horrified.
“You’ve really no need to worry,” Meridian said. “Letting people choose their own leaders is wonderful in theory, but they keep making the wrong choices. Better to have someone in charge who knows what they’re doing, wouldn’t you say? And I really am doing a lot of good.”
“Like what?” said Suzy.
“Reforming things,” said Meridian. “Building up those things that deserve their place, and pruning those that don’t. Take the Ether Web, for instance.”
Stonker gawked at him. “You’re behind that?”
“Unofficially. But yes, it’s one of my proudest achievements. Instant transfer of information across the Union, and all of it filtered and managed by me. If there’s something I want the people of the Union to know, I can tell them in a heartbeat. And if there’s something I think they’re better off not knowing, well…” He smiled. “I can see that it’s lost. The Web has changed everything.”
“It’s put a lot of good trolls out of work for one thing,” said Stonker, starting to flush red at the tips of his ears.
“Yes.” Meridian adopted a look of studious solemnity. “The Troll Post network is an unfortunate but necessary casualty of progress, I’m afraid. You were revolutionary in your day, but it’s time to yield to the future.” He nodded, as though confirming his own conclusion. “And the same is true for troll technology in general, wouldn’t you agree? It might be entertaining, but it’s rarely efficient, and never consistent. No two machines are ever alike! We deserve better.”
“It gets the job done,” said Stonker, the angry blush creeping down his ears to his cheeks. “And it’s made with real heart.”
“The troll elders told me much the same thing,” said Meridian. “Until I threatened to stage a hostile takeover of Trollville by the Vampire Kings of Chiroptera. They’ve had their beady, night-vision eyes on the Fourth Bridge for years. Ideal for roosting under, apparently.”
“I refuse to stand here and take this!” said Stonker.
“But you already have,” said Meridian. “I’ve been diverting funds and resources away from Troll Territory and toward other, more promising projects for over a year now. When there’s nothing left worth keeping, I’ll have your elders sell the land to someone who can put it to better use. It’s sad in many ways, I know, but I can hardly reshape the Union without cutting away the dead wood, now, can I?”
Stonker was positively apoplectic now. “Trolls are not ‘dead wood’!”
Meridian shrugged again. “We’ll have to agree to disagree. Of course, the great irony is that all this power is only effective as long as nobody suspects it exists. The leaders will all keep my secret to protect their own secrets, but if the Impossible Places at large ever find out about it, the game’s up. People are harder to manipulate when they know they’re being manipulated. That’s why I can’t afford any loose ends.”
The words shook Suzy out of her reverie. “What are you going to do to us?” she asked.
“I was considering an amnesia spell,” he said. “But one only has to overlook a single detail among all those tangled memories and emotions and everything comes flooding back.” He made a clucking sound with his tongue as he thought. “No, it will have to be a complete mind wipe, I’m afraid.”
“A what?” she said, backing away.
“That’s monstrous,” said Stonker. “Not to mention illegal.”
“Nothing is illegal for me anymore,” said Meridian. “But for what it’s worth, I am sorry it’s come to this. You’re all very fine people, and it’s a pity there won’t be any ‘you’ left after the wipe. You’ll have to spend a few years relearning basic skills like talking, eating, and dressing yourselves. But try to look on the bright side.” He turned a sympathetic smile on them. “You all get a fresh start.”
“What about me?” said Frederick.
“It’s the cells for you, I’m afraid,” said Meridian. “At least you won’t take up much room.”
Another explosion shook the building, strong enough to set the glitter swirling in Frederick’s globe, and Meridian had to steady himself against the desk to avoid falling. “That infernal woman,” he muttered. “As if I didn’t have enough to deal with.” He flourished his cane. “Right. Who’d like to go first?”
Maybe it was the jolt of adrenaline to her brain as he turned to her, but Suzy was suddenly able to put the first pieces of the puzzle together. It’s Crepuscula. Meridian’s surprised she followed us, but why? If she wants to take control of the Observatory, shouldn’t he have been expecting an attack? And why now? She could have attacked ages ago, but she didn’t. Because she was following us. She was following Frederick.
Suzy didn’t have the answers she needed, but these felt like the right questions.
“Wait!” she said, playing for time. “I still haven’t read the spell you gave me.”
Meridian paused, clearly displeased. “Must we do this now?”
“Yes,” she said. “I won’t be able to do it once you wipe my brain, will I?”
Meridian looked from her to Frederick and back again. He sighed. “Very we
ll,” he said. “But be quick about it.”
She hurried to the desk and picked up Frederick. The spell book lay beside him, but her hand passed over it and closed around Fletch’s wand instead.
“I’ve already told you,” said Meridian, “that wand won’t work with that spell. You’ll kill him.”
“I know,” she said.
Frederick squeaked. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me,” she whispered, and turned back to face Meridian. “I’ve changed my mind,” she told him. “I don’t want the spell anymore.”
“What?” said Frederick. “Suzy, you promised!”
“We had an understanding,” said Meridian, his voice clipped. “The spell in return for the Fact of Entry. I’ve discharged my duty to you.”
“I’m entitled to any piece of information in exchange for my Fact of Entry,” said Suzy. “I haven’t looked at the spell yet, so I’m asking for something else instead. That’s allowed, right?”
Meridian let out a long, whistling breath through his nose. “Technically, yes. But you are trying my patience.”
“This won’t take long,” she said. “Just tell me—does Crepuscula really want to take over the Union?”
“Are you serious?” Frederick cried. “Why do you need to know that?” But to Suzy’s immense satisfaction, Meridian’s face had drawn into a scowl so deep she thought his eyebrows might collide.
“That’s confidential,” he said through lips pressed into a thin white line.
“So you do know,” she said. “Which means it’s your sacred duty to tell me. Does she want to conquer the Union or not?”
She watched his face twist, as though he was trying to keep the words locked up inside his mouth. His cheeks went red, then white with the effort. He started to sweat. But whatever the weight of his obligation to her, it was too great for him to bear. Like a balloon bursting, he opened his mouth and let out a gasping rush of air, with one word on it.
“No!”
Suzy smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful. And I’m sorry about your head.”
