“What’s that?” Nick had said, perversely wanting to see Alan lie to him.
“Just something I’m reading,” Alan answered with a wry, plausible smile. Nick was suddenly reminded of Gerald the magician and had to turn away.
Now Camden was passing them by so fast that streets and lights had turned into a multicolored river, flashing yellow and orange over a smooth stream of gray.
Nick turned the car south toward the M3, hearing a clank as he moved into fourth. He’d have to see to the car sometime, though it was unlikely they would have time for mechanics in the near future.
It would take about two hours to get to Southampton if they were lucky with traffic, and then they could take the ferry to the Isle of Wight.
Nick was still thinking about the traffic when Alan said in a soft voice, “Nick, you get horribly seasick.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nick said.
He didn’t remember ever being on a boat. Running from magicians did not leave a lot of time for sailing the high seas, but the idea sounded implausible. Nick was never sick, and even if he had been, they were hardly going to change their plans because of a tiny thing like seasickness. He wasn’t letting Alan go off on his own.
“We took you on a boat once when you were little, and it was—” Alan bit his lip. “You coughed up blood. I thought you were going to die.”
“I didn’t,” Nick pointed out. “And if I was little, I imagine I’ve grown out of it by now.” He glanced over at Alan, whose profile was tense and unhappy. If Alan was so concerned about him, he thought, he might try telling him the truth once in a while instead of wasting time protecting him from boats.
Mae, Jamie, and Mum were silent in the backseat. After about an hour along the M3 and into the gathering night, Nick glanced in the mirror and saw Mum looking at him, her gaze steady and cold.
Alan seemed so ready to die to save her. Nick couldn’t understand it, and he wasn’t about to let it happen.
The ferry at Southampton’s second terminal was a huge white and red edifice, more like a tin house floating on the water than a boat. There seemed to be a jolly cloud painted on one side, as if they were all off on a day trip to the beach.
There were very few other passengers at this time of night. They waited until everyone else was aboard; nobody was in the mood to deal with strangers, Nick least of all. He strode onboard last, lagging behind even Alan’s limping step, and walked toward the railing at the side of the ferry as the whistle blew. He lifted his face to the cold wind and hoped everyone would understand that he wanted to be left alone.
The boat lurched as it set off. Nick felt his stomach tilt with it, and a moment of dizziness passed over him, a disoriented feeling similar to that of standing up too fast and having all the blood rush to your head. He deliberately did not look at the gray expanse of water, leaning heavily against the railing and clenching his hand hard around it. He squeezed the metal so tightly his knuckles went white and his fingers ached, and he concentrated on the pain. Having a focus cleared his head.
He felt the plunge of the hull against the waves in the pit of his stomach. He tried to count the waves but they kept coming, a succession of waves battering the boat, the whole sea nothing but currents under relentless currents.
Mae left Mum’s side to come and stand in front of Nick. Her face wavered in front of his eyes, bobbing as if she was underwater.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “We’ve only been moving for a minute and the sea’s calm, but you’ve gone all green. Do you want to go below deck, or…maybe you’d like a basin?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Nick said roughly, and tried to let go of the railing. His hands felt oddly numb, as if they did not belong to him, and then the boat creaked over another wave and he staggered, almost going down on his knees. Consciousness seemed to be sliding across the deck and away from him.
Alan turned, as if that was a cue he’d been waiting for, and moved toward Nick. The way he limped did not synchronize with the way the boat rocked, and for a moment Alan seemed like the only still point in a world full of endless sickening motion. Nick tried to hold on. Soon Alan could get to him and tell him what was happening.
The world was moving so much it was blurring into a meaningless mess of color and sound. There was a moment of small centralized pain, someone’s fingernails digging into Nick’s skin, and someone’s voice, high, saying: “Alan, Jamie! Quick—”
The world fell away as if the boat had tipped over and left them in the crashing darkness of the sea. There was nothing but darkness and confusion for a long moment, until Nick realized he was lying on the deck and retching, as if he had really been underwater and he had to cough up water to live. He did not taste water in his mouth, only the sharp bitterness of bile.
Bitterness only lasted an instant, though. Nick was used to being in complete command of his body, being strong and able to use all his strength. It was odd now, he thought in a drifting sort of way, to feel so helpless, to be so disconnected from his body. He was only sure that he had a body because of a strange pain that seemed part of the disconnection and because he was so cold.
“Nick,” said Alan’s voice, compelling and comforting at once.
Slowly, through the chill, Nick felt his hand held tight in Alan’s, his cheek pressed against the rough denim covering Alan’s knee. He became aware of his head as his own, a distinct shape, because of his brother’s hand stroking his hair.
“Nick,” Alan said again. “It’s all right, Nick.”
It was all right. Nick thought about this and decided that what Alan said was true. He’d never been helpless before, not since he could remember, but now he was and everything was all right. He didn’t normally let people touch him, but he could not stop it now. He did not have to speak, he was not able to move, all he could do was lie there and have his brother hold him, hunched over and shielding him from the world. His brother’s hand was light in his hair, his arm circling Nick’s shoulders as well as he could, and his voice in Nick’s ear was a warm soothing lifeline in the midst of the cold hissing of all the currents in the sea.
“Hold on, Nick. It’s only twenty minutes until we get there. Just hold on.”
Nick tried to do what Alan wanted and hold on to his brother’s hand, but he couldn’t feel his fingers properly. He looked, though, and Alan was still holding Nick’s hand, so perhaps that would be enough to make Alan happy. Nick vomited again, too cold and far away to care. He pressed his forehead against the inside of his brother’s wrist and let the drowning darkness pull him down again.
When he was next aware of anything, it was of being in a car that was jolting to a stop. His vision was hazy and he looked around desperately, as if by jerking his head hard enough he could make himself see, but then he realized that Alan was still holding his hand.
“Alan,” he mumbled, and the orange light of a streetlamp caught Alan’s glasses. The flash dimmed and Nick saw Alan’s face bending over him in the flickering shadows. “Where are we?”
“We’re in a taxi going from West Cowes to Carisbrooke village,” Alan answered softly, as if he was talking nonsense words to a child he was very fond of. “We’re going to Merris’s house. How are you feeling?”
“As if my body doesn’t belong to me,” Nick said.
“I’m sorry for bringing you onto that boat.”
Nick levered himself up on one elbow. “Not your fault. You warned me, I just didn’t think I was pathetic enough to collapse because of a little queasiness.”
“You’re an idiot,” said Alan, relaxing enough to smile at him. “But you’re not pathetic.”
There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Nick’s eye. He looked around sharply, dropping Alan’s hand, and saw Jamie and Mae sitting on the flip-down leather seats opposite them. He realized properly for the first time that they really were in a cab. He looked beyond the clouded glass to see the tired profile of the cab driver and the black fall of Mum’s hair in the passenger seat.<
br />
“How are you feeling, Nick?” Jamie inquired, shifting uneasily on his seat. He and Mae looked rather alike just now, both staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. He recognized with a shock the fact that they both looked worried.
“Can you walk?” asked Mae, being more practical. “We’re here.”
He nodded, and Mae opened the car door. Nick got out, straightened, and did not know what was keeping him up. When he looked down, it was his legs and feet as usual.
There was a high stone wall in front of them and an ornate gate. The stones in the wall glittered with mica. The iron of the gate was shaped into trees and snakes and women. The whole purpose of the walls and gate seemed to be decoration, but this was simply a distraction from the fact that the walls were very high and there were wicked-looking spikes on the gate. There was jagged glass gleaming on top of the walls, almost hidden by the leaves of trees behind them. It reminded Nick of Liannan, with her curtain of hair and sharp teeth.
He had to lean against the cab. He should not have stood up so soon; he tried to move and Alan was beside him. Nick must have been sagging, because he was eye level with the first button on Alan’s shirt.
“Mae, help me,” Alan ordered, and Mae was suddenly at Nick’s side.
Nick dimly approved of Alan’s choice. Mae was certainly better able to bear his weight than Jamie, and as for Mum, who was taller and stronger than either of them, she would not have touched Nick no matter who asked. Then his head lolled forward, his neck feeling like a thick tube of spaghetti. He was not going to be sick again; he just wanted to lie down until he remembered how to work his own body.
“Jamie,” Alan said, his voice soothing for Nick’s benefit, even though he was speaking to someone else. “Go and press the intercom button. Say ‘My name is one.’”
“One?” Jamie asked, blinking. “One what?”
“Jamie! Nick is going to fall over!”
“Right. I’m sorry,” said Jamie, shaking his head and stepping backward, almost walking into the tree and turning to scurry toward the gate. Nick heard his voice, seeming much farther away than it should have, saying that his name was one.
The gate swung open stiffly, as if it did not open often. Beyond was a garden with trees weighed down by their late-May green burdens, and crazy paving that stretched on until it was lost from view.
They went slowly down the garden path, Nick’s awareness of what was going on ebbing and fading with every step. The garden was a wild tangle that had clearly been left to decay for years; briars formed nightmare patterns against Nick’s eyelids as his eyes closed. Alan’s voice cut across his consciousness, saying his name, and Nick opened his eyes again with an effort.
In front of them now was a large white house, rising above them like a sheer white cliff. It was so large that it seemed to demand decoration, the decency of pillars and balconies, but here behind the gates there was no such pretense. There was only the severe white building, stretching up five floors. Above the large door were letters raised in gold.
The words swam before Nick’s eyes, gleaming fish that wanted to escape and would not form a coherent pattern, and then they stilled. Nick could feel his body now and it felt heavy, so heavy that he could not hold himself up.
The gold letters stayed for a moment, pinned up against the blackness, when his eyelids dropped and he fell forward.
THE HOUSE OF MEZENTIUS, the shining words read, and below that: THEIR NAME IS LEGION.
Nick woke in darkness to the sound of screams.
The darkness he solved by reaching out and turning on the lamp on the table beside his bed, but the screams were different. He sat up, noting with relief that his muscles and sinews now remembered they were his and obeyed him. He slipped out of the tangled embrace of sheets to have a look around. The room had a high ceiling, and little scalloped bits at the corners of said ceiling. His bed was big, with a carved oak headboard.
The screams were faint. Nick judged that they were muffled by thick walls, rather than all that far away.
The heavy door, also polished oak, slid open. Nick reached for a sword that was not there and was glad to see Alan. He was also glad to see that Alan had his sword.
Alan smiled, laugh lines leaping out from the corners of his eyes. “I see you’re feeling better.” He threw Nick a little heap of fabric, which Nick unfolded and saw was a shirt, the crisp buttoned kind you should wear with a suit. He was about to refuse it when he glanced down at his T-shirt and saw that it was stained with vomit and blood. He didn’t want to know if he’d hacked up blood. He just changed shirts.
Once he had done so, he gestured around at the room. “All this is very posh.”
“It’s Merris Cromwell’s house.”
Nick supposed that made sense. Everybody knew Merris had money, even though he hadn’t known she had this much.
“Where are the others?”
Alan looked pleased that he’d asked. “Nearby. Mum’s asleep, Merris gave her something to calm her down, but the others are wondering how you are. We’ve all been put in the north wing, so we’re pretty close together. Do you want to go see them?”
Nick shrugged, and Alan led the way. The north wing seemed to be mostly corridors so wide they almost qualified as rooms, the walls sleek and white and the wooden floors all dark from years and polish. They found Mae and Jamie in a room reminiscent of Nick’s, with the same solemn-looking bed and crenulated ceiling. Jamie was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and Mae was pacing across a fluffy white rug that looked like a decapitated polar bear.
“We should go check on him,” she said as Nick opened the door.
Jamie nodded in his direction. “I think he’s probably all right.”
Mae looked around and did not blush. Nick liked that, the way she felt no need to pretend either indifference or exaggerated concern. She just nodded at him.
He was not used to big houses like this. He was used to small, shabby houses and flats, places with so few rooms and such thin walls that he always knew where Alan was. Now he was in wide open spaces under vaulted ceilings, and he was noticing too many things about this girl. The strangeness of it all made him feel irritated and uncomfortable. He slouched against the wall and looked deliberately through Mae. After a few moments she moved away from the coldness of his fixed gaze, toward Alan.
It didn’t make Nick feel any better. He felt restless suddenly, and as he tuned out the others’ voices and wished for something to do, he registered again the sound that had woken him. Coming to him through heavy doors and solid walls, through all the expensive privacy of this house, were faint but unmistakable screams.
It was obvious that the rest of them couldn’t hear it. He should probably tell Alan.
“There is someone being tortured in this house.”
Alan gave a guilty start, and it was clear to Nick that he at least already knew.
“That’s not entirely true,” he said hastily.
“Tortured?” exclaimed Jamie.
Nick shrugged. “Sounds like that to me.”
“Alan,” Mae said, in a tone of command rather than appeal. “Where are we?”
Alan looked defeated already, as if some terrible fate was rushing upon them, something as impossible to reason with or escape from as a storm spilling darkness across the sky.
“This is the House of Mezentius,” he said.
“That’s what it said above the door,” Nick agreed. “Who’s Mezentius?”
Alan seemed to be having trouble with the words. “He was an Etruscan king in a legend,” he said slowly. “He had living people bound face-to-face with dead bodies and left to starve.”
“He sounds a charming host,” said Nick. “I thought you said this was Merris Cromwell’s house.”
“Merris runs the house,” Alan answered in a low voice. “It’s her job to organize everything here, to keep everything…contained.”
“Well she’s not doing a very good job, is she?” Jamie exclaimed. “If there’s someon
e being tortured in here.”
“That person’s here of their own free will,” Alan told him.
His eyes looked more bruised and sad with every word dragged out of him, and Nick felt the impulse to silence all the questions that were hurting his brother. He’d always trusted Alan to know best, trusted that Alan would sooner or later tell Nick everything he needed to know. He thought of that hidden picture, though, and about him letting that magician go. There were some things Alan never said anything about. He wondered what secret Alan was hiding this time.
He kept quiet, and let Mae and Jamie keep pushing for answers.
“Do you know the person who’s screaming?”
“Why would someone come here to be tortured?”
Mae demanded, “Can’t you just show us what’s going on?”
Alan looked almost gray. “I can,” he said. “But you don’t want to see. I swear, you don’t want to see.”
There was another slight movement of unease in Nick’s gut. He could still shut them both up.
He hesitated a second too long and gave Mae the chance to make up her own mind.
“Let me decide that for myself. I want to see.”
Alan walked down the staircase heavily, as if he was carrying a large burden that he did not expect to be able to put down for some time. Mae walked with a firm step beside him, Jamie was hanging back, and Nick became more and more convinced that he did not like this place.
The staircase was wide, a gleaming marble flight of the kind that women swept down in the sappy movies Alan liked. Only instead of leading to a ballroom, it ended in a hall with the same dark polished floors and severe white walls as the corridors in the north wing. Nick kept trying to work out why this place jarred on him so much, and then he got it. The north wing with its four-poster beds and fancy ceilings was a disguise, and this house was as much of a facade as the decorative gate outside.
This was not a stately home. This place was an institution.
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