“I would like to explain my actions to you—and then apologize—if you will listen to it.”
“You’re in my house,” I said.
“You didn’t invite us in, to be fair,” Borrick put in.
“No, but it shows you just how little choice I have in the matter. Might as well hear you out, mightn’t I?”
Heidi cleared her throat.
“Remember when we spoke, outside the last chamber in our search for the Tide of Ages?”
I remembered. It had been a rare heart-to-heart with Heidi, one that filled me with sorrow, but which brought us together in a way we hadn’t been before that, when she was carried forward on a wave of anger alone.
“I told you that, five years ago, my mum went back to China, and broke my family apart. Remember?”
I remembered.
“Well—that’s not entirely true.”
Of course it wasn’t. This was Heidi we were talking about—backstabber extraordinaire. I hadn’t thought about that story in some time—Heidi’s betrayal came only days before Manny had—
(Died.)
—had disappeared. So I wasn’t exactly lingering on her actions, re-examining everything that had passed between us before the truth came out. Now, though, now that I knew—there was no question in my mind that the sob story she’d woven out by the Tide of the Ages’ final chamber was utter crap.
“She did go back to China,” Heidi said, “but whatever I implied her reasons to be, whatever you read into it, it was not because she no longer wished to be a part of our family anymore. She was looking for something—following a quest line—and partway through it, she just vanished, poof, without a trace.
“It was out of the blue, her disappearing. But when Dad went looking for her—a whole posse of Seekers with him, and me, too—that was when we realized she was following an Antecessor quest.”
In spite of myself, I couldn’t help but ask, “What?”
Heidi shook her head. “I don’t know. She never finished the quest line—just disappeared about midway through it, not a hint of her left behind.
“In the end, Dad and everyone else decided that she’d probably died. Gone off into a void or something, slipped into a shattered world. That explained the lack of … remains.” She said this carefully, clearly not wanting to.
“But I didn’t believe it,” she went on. “I still don’t. I think she’s out there, somewhere. And I want to find her.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you,” I said, waving back toward the door we’d come in by. “The rest of the world is right out there, back where you came from.”
Heidi’s jaw clenched. “I’m telling you this for context, Mira. It’s why I wanted the Tide of Ages—I didn’t lie about that—and,” she said, taking a large breath, “it’s why I dealt with your grandmother for so long. Because she promised me a way to find her.”
“And in exchange, all you had to do was stab me in the back,” I said.
“I did not stab you in the back,” Heidi said sharply, eyes flashing. Ah, yes—this was the Heidi I knew well. “I told your grandmother what you were doing, how things were going. I reported information, that’s it.”
“You sold me out. All of us—me, Bub, and Carson.” I paused. “Well, me and Carson, anyway.” Bub, too, it turned out, had been a spy for my grandmother.
Heidi reeled back at that, like I thought she would. But she recovered quickly.
“Lady Hauk cares about you. All she wanted was to know how you were doing. I told her that. Is that really so bad?”
“Yes,” I said. “You had no right—”
“She’s your grandmother!”
“She is a liar, and a manipulator, whose only business was securing the Brand name,” I spat back. “She didn’t care about me. All she wanted was to make sure I wasn’t going too badly wrong and sullying this stupid namesake I was born into. There was no care there, no concern for my wellbeing. I was just a pawn—yet again.”
Once more, Heidi’s lips thinned down to a perilous little line, looking like it had been drawn on with a pencil sharpened to a perfect point.
“You know what it feels like to lose someone,” she said quietly.
An image of Manny came back to me, darting through a gateway to a void that swallowed him, unravelling him, turning him not just into his constituent elements but simply to nothing, nothing at all.
Yes, I knew how that hurt.
“It doesn’t excuse it,” I said. But my words were limp—for how could I say I wouldn’t do the same, in her position?
“I wasn’t saying it does,” Heidi said.
We were quiet a moment. Birds tweeted outside—chirps, not smartphone 160-character yells to a world always bloody listening—and from the kitchen came the soft clink of mugs. The tea must be close to ready. Actually, shouldn’t it have been a little while ago now? The kettle didn’t take that long to boil.
“I didn’t ever collect on my deal with Lady Hauk,” said Heidi. “After you found out about it, and the way you reacted—like I knew you would—I was too disgusted with myself to ever face her again.”
“Better late than never,” I griped. “So—now what? You double-crossed me, then this loser here—” I pointed a finger at Borrick “—double-crossed you to me … and now you’re best buds? Again?” My eyes glinted. “You have worked together before, haven’t you?”
Borrick exchanged a glance with Heidi.
“We might have crossed paths once or twice,” he said diplomatically.
“Hah. You’d make a good politician.”
Heidi rolled her eyes. “The why doesn’t matter here. What does is that—we’ve got something. Something that you will want in on.”
I held my hands up. “I’ll stop you right there. I’ve already heard it—the Instrumentum Aeternitatis. Not interested.”
“I know,” said Heidi.
“Then let me show you the door,” I said, pushing onto my feet.
Borrick moved to rise—Heidi caught him around the arm with her thumb and forefinger, grasping his jacket and tugging him back down.
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Heidi. “Not until you’ve seen—”
“How much of a lying rat you are?” I asked. “Already seen it. Or how much of a spineless cretin this one is?” I jabbed my finger at Borrick again. “I’ve seen him flop back and forth between teams enough already.” A pause. “Actually, you know what? Neither of you are loyal. Why, you’re a match made in heaven. What do you even need me for?”
Heidi sighed. “Show her the coin, Borrick.”
He reached into his jacket and withdrew a pouch. This, he placed onto the table, and he frittered with the drawstrings that held it closed.
“A single coin?” I scoffed. “You want to buy my help with one lousy coin? Did you forget I received a third of the payout for locating the lost treasure of Ostiagard?”
“Sit down, Mira,” Heidi said.
I refused.
“Fine,” she said. “Suit yourself. Borrick—show her.”
He’d removed the coin from the pouch he’d stowed it in. It was quite a bit larger than any coin I’d seen before—nearly the size of my entire palm—and it was bronze, an embossed image on one side.
He placed it on the table gingerly, and then slid it over.
I should have just shoved it back to him.
But then, hindsight is always 20/20.
Instead I leaned over, looking in spite of myself.
The embossed image was a face. Very impressively rendered, it was a picture perfect representation of one, the expression sedate, curly hair sprouting.
I sucked in a breath, my heart skipping.
I recognized that face all too well—because there, on that coin, looking back out—
Was me.
7
“It’s carved in obduridium,” Borrick was saying. “Really impressive handiwork, obviously. Just one look at it, and we knew …”
His words washed over me, not goin
g in. All I could do was stare—stare at this rendition of me, this perfect representation, looking as though someone had taken a 3D scan of my face from front and center, then pressed it down so it was near flat, and stuck it onto the front of a bronze disc.
“Where did you get this?” I asked. Did I sound strangled? Was that really my voice?
But of course it was.
“We’ve already completed the first stage of the Instrument of Undying’s quest,” said Heidi. “This was the reward—the key, I guess.”
“Uncanny, isn’t it?” Borrick said.
Uncanny? Yes. Like looking in a bronze mirror, almost.
I was not impressed though. No part of me was amazed at this, staggered by the workmanship that had gone into making this rendition so perfect, or honored that the Antecessors had chosen to put me, of all people, on an obduridium coin.
No, this was anything but that. This was a clear message—the Antecessors wanted me to throw myself in, yet again, to their mad nonsense—to their completely stupid, pointless games. They’d forced me to watch as my brother pitched himself into a void, wiped out of existence—and now they wanted me to come back, to run round their damned mazes again, for their amusement.
No.
At first I was frozen, staring. Then my vocal cords came unhinged.
Then rage blew through me.
It was like a dam crumbling, after holding a vast reservoir of water back. For so long, I’d been near comatose. Now, though—now I was fuming. Even more than that—I was on the verge of an explosion, like Mount Vesuvius—and Heidi and Borrick would be my Pompeii, and my mother and father and sister. Perhaps all of Colchester, if I went off as big as I thought I would, by the heat rising, rapidly, in my veins—
“We think we’ve got the second part worked out,” Heidi was saying. “There’s a place—”
“Take your coin,” I cut across, my voice shrill, eyes wide, “and shove it up your arses. I don’t want it.”
Heidi stopped, stared. Borrick too, paused, apprehensive all at once.
“But the coin has your face—” he began.
“I don’t bloody well want it!” I roared, rising. The chair tipped out from under me, landing on its back with a clatter. At the same moment, I threw the coin, as hard as I could, across the table—
Borrick leapt for it, sending his own chair flying. He caught it in one deft movement.
Heidi sat like a statue. Her eyes were wide, more white than pupil, as she stared at me.
I rounded on her. “Get out of my house. NOW. I am having no part of this madness—not for one second longer.”
She began, “Mira, what’s—?”
“GET OUT!”
Mum burst through the kitchen door. Somehow, still the tea wasn’t done—just what was she doing out there, boiling the water using candles?—so she came empty-handed. Her gaze was fiery on me though—and fierier still when she saw my chair on its back, Borrick picking his up, and me round the table, face dark and pointing angrily at my ‘guests’. Probably thought I’d shoved him out of his, the way I was standing.
“Mira!” she barked.
I turned my burning gaze upon her. “Leave me alone,” I growled, eyes flashing.
She paused. There was more admonishment to come—but the deadened, comatose Mira had vanished, replaced with a ball of burning flame. As domineering a force as she could be, this was one battle she could not hope to win—so after a dramatic gulp of air, she said, “I’ll go finish making the tea,” in a thick accent, and disappeared behind the door. Her silhouette vanished double-time—and then another door closed on the other side of the kitchen as she put even more distance between us.
“My tea,” Borrick lamented.
I practically breathed flame at him, like a dragon spurting jets of orange-red heat from its nostrils. “You can forget your tea, both of you, and get out of my house. Go on, get out!” When neither moved, I marched round to Borrick’s chair, and snatched it out of his hand. “MOVE IT!”
“Mira, would you please calm down?” Heidi asked from her seat.
“Calm down? CALM DOWN? I’m done with this! I’m done with being played with!”
Her eyebrows knitted. “Played with? We’re not—”
“Don’t you see? It’s all just games to them. And I’m done with it, you hear me? DONE.”
Both of them exchanged increasingly perturbed stares.
“Is this because of Manny?” Borrick ventured carefully.
I turned on him again.
My look was all the answer he needed. He darted back, as though afraid I’d slap him—or sink my fingers into his eye sockets and mouth and swing him out of here like a goth nerd bowling ball.
“Don’t you dare say my brother’s name,” I whispered. “Don’t you dare.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. And he sounded like he meant it, genuinely.
There was a stunned silence between us. I glared at Borrick, and at Heidi, who’d retained her place on her seat at the table despite my proximity, and the waves of heat rolling off of me. The two of them exchanged concerned looks, but neither said a word.
“Get out of my house,” I said.
“You can’t ignore this, Mira,” Heidi countered.
“Yes, I can.”
“The Antecessors are calling to you.”
“The Antecessors can—do you even know what they are?”
No answer.
Borrick licked his bottom lip. “Mira,” he said, reaching out a hand that must have been intended as a comfort—but he snatched it back just as quickly. “What happened to you?” he whispered.
What had happened to me? I saw the whole bloody picture. I saw just how infinitesimally tiny we all were, how meaningless all of this was. I was a COMPETITOR, same as all the others, and the puzzles and objects we hunted for no more than treats to lure us in, so the Antecessors could watch with grim interest as we fought through their puzzles, hopefully dying in the process for an extra bit of excitement. I’d seen the cosmos, and my place in it—and that place was nothing, nothing at all. And after the seventy or eighty years left to me, I’d wink out, one of those many lights the Antecessors had spread out before me … and then I truly would be nothing. All my actions, all my choices—they meant nothing.
To put all this in words, though—it meant facing it, facing it in a way that was tangible and real, rather than as a concept in my head which I could turn over and look at in some abstract way without really looking at it. Converting it into language made it more real, made it more of a physical thing that we could all turn over together, that Heidi and Borrick would wish to discuss.
And I had no intention of discussing it.
So I turned away.
“I’m done here,” I said. “I’m finished. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Quiet.
Heidi said: “Then what do you want?”
I’d touched upon that question, too, in my mind, in a distant sort of way. Abstract thinking again, not really making the thought cement. Because—what would I want to do? All my life, I’d wanted this one thing. And for nearly eight months, I’d had it.
Then I saw the truth, and it was ripped away from me.
It left a void—a whole collection of them, like holes in cheese, Seeking gone, my brother wrenched out, the friends I’d had torn from my grip …
At this point I was more hole than whole.
“Not this,” I whispered.
“But …” Borrick began. “But I thought Seeking was all you ever wanted to do. That was the impression I got anyway. I know it was the same for me.”
“Yeah, well, things change, don’t they.”
“But—but you’re so much—better than me at it,” Borrick said. He sounded almost strangled, in admitting that—and I have to confess that, deep, deep down within me, there was a small spark at that, a tiny little glimmer of victory, before it was snuffed out. “Look at everything you’ve accomplished,” he went on. “And—look at this!” There
was a clink as he laid the coin down upon the table.
I had no choice but to glance at it—like a moth to a flame.
My image looked back sedately.
“You’ve landed yourself an image in an Antecessor shrine,” said Borrick. “They must think a lot of your efforts to have done that.”
I shook my head. “No, they don’t. They don’t think much of any of us.”
“Look, Mira,” said Heidi gently. She stepped up now, out of her seat, bringing us as close to level as she could, what with the height difference. “I know that, after everything, I have no right to come to you, like this, and ask for help. And if this were only for me, then I wouldn’t. But I … I have to know what happened to my mum—just like I know you would, for Manny.”
My stomach clenched.
His name stung.
“This carving,” she said, “it’s clear. The Antecessors … they want you, Mira.” She added, in a whisper: “Which means...I need you.”
Me—yes, there was no question of that. The rendering was clear. I hated it—but I could not argue it. The Antecessors wanted me back in this, even when I was keen to get as far from it as I possibly could.
And I could. It would be so easy to turn around and say no to them, as I already had. I owed Heidi nothing, and even less to Borrick. The pair of them couldn’t force me into anything. So if I declined, they’d have no choice but to leave—and this quest would come to an abrupt end. Just as Heidi’s mother’s had.
Just as Manny’s had, too.
I closed my eyes on the pang of pain that went through me.
If he’d vanished, but I hadn’t seen it … if he’d stepped into the void, but the Antecessors had not shown me, so for all intents and purposes to me it was as if he just disappeared … wouldn’t I want to know? Wouldn’t I dedicate myself to searching for him, no matter the cost?
Yes. Of course I would.
And so, as much as it pained me to admit it … I could understand Heidi.
I shook my head.
No, Mira. Don’t do this.
But—like a moth to a flame. That moth had been me my whole life and Seeking was the flame.
So, after a long moment, I nodded, just once.
We Aimless Few Page 4
