Mystery of the Golden Card

by Garth Nix

  The creature roared without words and reached out for them anyway, flailing with hand and hoof and claw.

  Every time one of the limbs threatened to come close, Tara and Kyle whacked it with a poker, forcing it to retreat.

  The vortex spun. The creature spun with it. For a long minute, nothing else changed.

  Slowly, warily, Jaide, Jack, Kyle and Tara stood up and faced The Evil in its prison of wind and darkness.

  They looked at one another, bloodied and soaked through, clothes torn and dishevelled, the Card of Translocation gleaming in Tara’s hand.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Kyle. ‘Have we won?’

  At that moment, the ceiling burst open and something bright flashed down into the centre of the room. An explosive force flung the four children back against the walls, stunning them momentarily. The vortex trembled, and Jaide reached out with both hands to control it. Jack pulled more of the night into the room, winding ropes of deepest black around the creature it contained.

  ‘Wait,’ said Tara, ‘I think there’s someone in there!’

  Jack peered through the roiling wind. A flash of lightning blinded his sensitive sight, but he did glimpse the figure of a man spread-eagled in the tumultuous wind. Lightning flashed again, and the vortex rocked and swayed. Jaide tried to bring it into line, but when lightning flashed a third time, the vortex wriggled like a belly dancer and spat a familiar figure out onto the ruined floor.

  A man who looked exactly like Hector Shield landed on his hands and knees, spluttering, glasses completely missing, a familiar pitted iron rod raised waveringly in one hand.

  Jack and Jaide just stared at him, the echoes of a very loud thunderclap still ringing in their ears. Was this man their father or some Evil impersonation?

  Then with a roar, a sabre-toothed tiger leaped through the hole in the roof, closely followed by a much smaller, ginger shadow. Custer and Ari took a protective stance between the twins and the vortex, as above them all a helicopter swung into view, its downdraft and spotlight only adding to the confusion.

  ‘Keep back,’ said the man who might or might not be their father. ‘Let us . . . uh . . . that is . . .’

  The vortex had returned to its former state, with The Evil firmly trapped inside. To illustrate the point, Kyle jabbed the snout of a passing possum with his poker, making it retreat back into the swirling mass of mixed-up bodies.

  The sabre-toothed tiger circled the vortex once, then sat on its haunches at Hector Shield’s side.

  ‘We’ve arrived too late, Hector,’ it said in Custer’s voice.

  ‘Do you think?’ added Ari, staring up in awe at Jack and Jaide.

  The twins had eyes only for their father. It had to be him now, if Custer said so.

  ‘Come here, troubletwisters,’ Hector said, opening his arms as his twin had, and this time they ran to him without hesitation.

  Above them, the chopper came low over the ruined roof, swaying from side to side in the vortex’s updraft.

  ‘Is anyone harmed?’ came Grandma X’s voice over the helicopter’s loudspeaker.

  Hector took his arm from around Jaide’s shoulders and gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up.

  ‘Good work, troubletwisters,’ said Grandma X, and the twins glowed with pride. ‘Your mother says that this time the grown-ups will do the cleaning up.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Not All Twins Are

  Troubletwisters . . .

  THE HELICOPTER PUT DOWN BEHIND the porter’s lodge, allowing its passengers to step out onto solid ground. Grandma X was wearing a long coat over her hospital gown. Susan Shield raised an umbrella once they were clear of the rotors and steadied the older woman as they crossed to the lodge’s back door. Kleo ran with them, keeping close to their heels in order to share the umbrella.

  Arrayed around the lodge, next to several incongruous suits of armour frozen in mid-step, were a number of familiar faces: Aleksandr, Roberta Gendry, Phanindranath . . . The Wardens had come when called, but they were keeping well back now. They understood that this was no ordinary attack by The Evil. This was personal.

  Custer greeted them outside the lodge, in human form.

  ‘I’m on my way to get him,’ was all he said.

  Grandma X nodded with a weariness that had nothing to do with tranquillisers or other modern drugs.

  ‘Be kind,’ she said, ‘but firm. I want to see him.’

  He nodded. They went inside.

  The lodge was ruined, gutted by wind and rain. Everything Young Master Rourke had owned that wasn’t already boxed up was now soaked through or torn to shreds. The ceiling sagged. Floorboards curled under sodden carpet. Even the wallpaper was peeling from the walls.

  The sources of the destructive force stood on either side of their father. Behind them were two more children and a parrot. They should have been shivering in the cold and wet, but their faces said it all. They were beaming, proud of what they had done. Success kept them warm.

  Near them, hissing like a fat, bloated snake, was the black-striped vortex containing what remained of The Evil, evidence that they had done very well indeed.

  ‘Grandma!’ the troubletwisters cried, interrupting their explanation of what had happened to greet the new arrivals. ‘And Mum – what are you doing here?’

  ‘Your grandmother . . . appeared to me,’ said Susan. ‘She said you were in danger. The chopper was the fastest means we had of getting here.’

  ‘I heard the call of the Living Ward,’ Grandma X explained. ‘Custer was summoned by Ari.’

  The ginger cat looked smug. ‘He didn’t believe me at first, but the smell of wolf on me was a bit of a giveaway.’

  Susan looked around in amazement and alarm at the damage, at the vortex, and finally at the twins’ father.

  ‘Were you in danger?’ she asked them all. ‘Because that wasn’t why we moved here.’

  ‘That discussion can wait,’ said Grandma X, opening her arms. ‘Come here and give me that wretched card.’

  They ran to her and hugged her, and after a moment Susan hugged them, too.

  Tara hesitantly approached the huddle, holding the Card of Translocation tightly in one hand. She was reluctant to give it up. She had seen its power and wanted more than just a glimpse of it.

  ‘Here,’ she said, winning the war within herself and offering it to Grandma X. ‘I guess you’ll know what to do with it.’

  ‘Thank you, Tara. So . . . the Gift of Translocation. That’s what this is all about.’

  Grandma X took the card from her and studied it for a long moment.

  ‘Let’s see. It must be here somewhere.’ Symbols flashed by, as mysterious as the Gifts they represented. One appeared, one they had glimpsed before – a square with a straight line drawn through it. ‘Ah, yes. Butler’s Gift, lost for forty years.’

  Grandma X raised the card, and something changed. Jack and Jaide felt it, although they couldn’t have defined how or where they were feeling it.

  Then the animals in the vortex started howling in terror, and they knew what had happened. The wards were back, reactivated by the Gift Grandma X had found. With the return of the wards, The Evil was driven out, and it had left its creatures behind, afraid and confused.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jaide, ‘those poor things.’

  She clapped her hands as she had seen Grandma X do, and her Gift, weary from so much exertion, relaxed instantly. The vortex collapsed, and the binds of blindness that stopped the animals from seeing unwound, too, as Jack followed Jaide’s lead. The animals staggered dizzily free.

  Kyle stepped forward. ‘Hey, Chippy, here.’

  One of the chimpanzees lurched to him and climbed up into his arms, scratching its head in confusion.

  ‘Flippy?’

  The second chimp joined him.

  ‘We’d better get them back in their cages,’ Kyle said, ‘and all the others, before they run away again.’

  ‘Tara, will you help him?’ said Grandma X.

  Tar
a eyed the wolves with wary scepticism. ‘Will they do as they’re told?’

  ‘Sure they will,’ said Kyle, ‘if you call them by name. Come, Tasker. Come, Kress. You’ll be good for me, won’t you?’

  ‘Ari, Kleo,’ said Grandma X, ‘go with them. They should be safe, now the wards are back up. I have shifted the boundaries slightly to include the lodge and the rest of the estate.’

  The wolves shook their furry flanks and followed as Kyle led the animals out of the room in a ragtag line. All except Cornelia, who flapped warily back to her perch as Ari passed by.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ the cat said as he trailed after the other animals. ‘I only eat free-range.’

  That left just Grandma X, Susan, Hector, and the twins. Jack and Jaide returned to their father’s side, so glad to be near him again but wary of their Gifts playing up. Fortunately, both Gifts were exhausted and content to remain quiescent, for now.

  ‘How did you know to come?’ Jaide asked him.

  ‘The Evil was keeping me busy in Bologna,’ he said. ‘Much busier than usual, which should have made me suspicious, on top of your grandma’s accident. I called a couple of times but kept missing everyone. That was The Evil distracting you, too, I guess. But then I felt you begging me – like I was there talking to you, when I couldn’t possibly be. There was only one way that could be happening.’

  ‘It was dangerous for you to come here,’ Grandma X said to him, ‘but I’m glad you did. We need to be together for what comes next.’

  ‘I wish someone would explain what’s going on,’ said Susan in a strangled tone, as though she didn’t really want to know at all.

  ‘You’re right, dear,’ said Grandma X. ‘Some of it the troubletwisters might already have guessed, because they are always so curious . . . so determined to know everything. I can assure you, you won’t be any gladder for having the answers, Jack and Jaide. I wasn’t. And neither was your father.’

  There was movement in the doorway. They turned as one to see Rodeo Dave and Custer leading a beaten man into the room. He looked almost but not exactly like Hector Shield. Now that they were face to face, the twins could detect subtle differences between them. One had a harder expression, as though he had known more doubt and suffering in his life, while the other – the father they knew and loved, their Hector Shield – had laughter lines and kindly eyes, even when directed at the man who had tried to give them up to The Evil.

  ‘This man,’ Hector said, as though confessing to a terrible crime, ‘is Harold . . . my twin brother.’

  Susan gaped at him, and the twins were no less surprised, even though the possibility had occurred to them earlier. Fantastical though it seemed, it was the only explanation that made any sense. But it opened up a whole new world of questions. If their father was a twin just like them, why had he kept that a secret from them all their lives? What had happened between him and his brother to make them hate each other?

  ‘Don’t look so appalled, troubletwisters,’ said the uncle they had never known they had. ‘Blood is thicker than water. Isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ Hector said in a low, almost dangerous tone that the twins had never heard before. ‘But I suppose you’ve wanted this ever since you fell to The Evil.’

  ‘Fell?’ Harold Shield’s eyebrows went up into his sopping fringe. ‘I gave myself up willingly, so you could live! The least you could do is be grateful.’

  ‘For putting everyone I love in terrible danger? I’ll never forgive you for that. And neither will Mother.’

  ‘Oh, yes, take her side, just like you always did.’

  ‘Only because she’s right, and you know it.’

  ‘You never see my side.’

  Hector took a deep breath, visibly controlling himself. ‘You pretended to be me. You sent an agent of The Evil into Portland to put Mother in the hospital. You kept Custer and me busy so we would be out of the picture. You stole what wasn’t yours.’

  ‘He gave it away,’ Harold said, tipping his head at Rodeo Dave. ‘He hid it so well he even erased his own memory of it, so he couldn’t get it back when the old man died. The fool!’

  ‘Killer!’ squawked Cornelia from her perch.

  ‘Did you kill Young Master Rourke?’ asked Jack.

  ‘No! I wanted to ask him what he knew, but his heart was weak. He died before he could tell me anything.’

  ‘So you tricked the children instead, my children.’ Hector Shield had never looked so angry as he did at that moment. ‘You used them.’

  ‘I just wanted to know them!’

  ‘You could have known them,’ Hector said. ‘You would have been welcome to. But you chose a different path. You chose The Evil.’

  Harold Shield sagged with a cry of pain and put his hands over his face.

  ‘It chose me,’ Harold sobbed. A light rain began to fall inside the room. ‘It knew I was the weak one. But I’ve tried to hold it back. I honestly tried to save the troubletwisters. The Evil said it would spare them if I gave the card to it . . . It said . . . It said . . .’

  ‘It deceived you,’ said Grandma X, looking even older and smaller than she had in the hospital. ‘That’s all it ever does.’

  He just shook his head.

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’ asked Jaide.

  ‘Do?’ Grandma X turned to face her, and some of her usual stature returned. ‘Wardens don’t have executioners. We don’t have prisons, or even laws, as the rest of the world would understand them. We have only one punishment for those who betray us.’

  ‘Please,’ sobbed Harold. ‘Please . . . don’t . . .’

  Grandma X shook her head. Hector turned his back. Susan and the twins watched, unable to look away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Harold,’ she said, raising the Card of Translocation and pointing it at him, ‘more sorry than I suppose you can imagine . . . but you brought this upon yourself.’

  The gold card turned blank for an instant, then revealed a new symbol, a curling raindrop – Harold Shield’s Gift.

  He hung his head and wept in silence. The gentle rain falling in the porter’s lodge turned to mist and faded away.

  Grandma X put the card in the pocket of her overcoat.

  ‘I believe I saw some armour outside,’ she said. ‘They can hold him while we attend to other business.’

  She snapped her fingers. Thudding footfalls sounded in the corridor, and two formerly Evil suits of armour entered the room.

  ‘Watch this man,’ she told them. ‘Do not let him leave. I will return you to your rest when I come back’

  They bowed and took Rodeo Dave and Custer’s places at Harold’s side, gripping him with strong metal fingers.

  ‘Now,’ said Grandma X, ‘is there anyone we haven’t accounted for?’

  ‘Thomas Solomon,’ said Jack, wondering if the security guard could possibly still be asleep. ‘And Professor Olafsson.’

  ‘Professor who?’ asked Custer.

  ‘A rather unique individual,’ said Rodeo Dave. ‘He advised me on how to hide my Gift.’

  ‘And he helped us find it again,’ said Jaide. ‘We left him in Zebediah.’

  Grandma X nodded. ‘We’ll go get him now, and pick up any other pieces that might reveal what happened here.’

  ‘Literally,’ said Jack, thinking of the broken death mask as well as the bent cross-continuum conduit constructor, abandoned in the library.

  They filed outside, leaving Harold Shield slumped in the arms of the suits of armour. The lingering rain lacked the fury of earlier bursts, but the ground remained sodden and treacherous. Jaide hung back to help Rodeo Dave, who she only now realised was wearing slippers instead of proper shoes. He slipped several times on the slick grass before reaching the rougher road surface.

  ‘I’m sorry we crashed Zebediah,’ she said.

  ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘My old companion still has a few tricks. The dents will be gone by tomorrow.’

  ‘Th
e car was your Warden Companion?’ she asked, amazed.

  ‘Never a finer example,’ he said with a grin.

  She supposed that wasn’t the weirdest thing she had learned that night.

  ‘I can’t believe my dad’s a twin,’ she said.

  ‘Not all twins are troubletwisters,’ said Rodeo Dave, as though reciting a riddle, ‘but all troubletwisters are twins.’

  Jaide had heard something like that before, from her early days in Portland. All troubletwisters are twins but not all twins are troubletwisters, Grandma X had told them, but Jaide hadn’t stopped to untangle it then. There had been more pressing things, like discovering she had Gifts and that her father and grandmother were Wardens. She thought about it now, though, and began to understand that it was a thing of great importance.

  ‘So just because someone’s born a twin,’ she said, ‘that doesn’t automatically make them a troubletwister.’

  ‘Correct, Jaide.’

  ‘But every troubletwister has a twin, like I do. And Dad does. And you do . . . ?’

  ‘And Custer, and your grandmother. All of us do.’

  ‘So where’s your twin?’

  ‘She . . . well, she’s dead, Jaide. Her Gift gave her the power of language: she could understand and be understood by anyone. But she didn’t understand herself, and that, ultimately, was her undoing.’

  They curled slowly around the lake, far behind Grandma X and the others. Jack walked between Susan and Hector. Jaide felt a tiny pang of jealousy. She wished she was in his place, standing next to her father and mother like everything was normal.

  ‘The Gift I was born with was the Gift of Translocation,’ Rodeo Dave said, although Jaide hadn’t asked. ‘It’s a great burden, one only a few in every generation bears. It’s only ever used on Wardens who have gone bad, as you’ve seen, so The Evil can’t gain their Gifts for its own use, or so their Gifts won’t be used against ordinary people, but it’s still robbing a Warden of everything they are, leaving them empty. I began to feel like an executioner. It made me hate my Gift, and the way my fellow Wardens made me use it, but I couldn’t give it up completely. That’s why I made the card and put my own Gift into it, along with all the other Gifts I had taken. Then I hid it in a place I thought it would never be discovered. I put charms to protect it and warn me if it was ever disturbed. I made a bookmark to remind me where it was, if I ever needed it again.