by Danny Lasko
Four Synarch cruisers advance toward us, corralling the ship. Without Linus, we can’t outrun them.
“Horatio,” calls Annie, with panic seeping in.
“London survives,” I say to her.
“Do we?” asks Jayce, stuffing the next cannonball. But I don’t answer. I just keep firing.
One goes down, but the other three train their guns on our hull, ready to blast us out of the sky, when rock and dirt suddenly shoot from the ground into a giant spike, skewering the lead Synarch ship. It explodes instantly, spraying debris and fire at the fleet’s other two cruisers, causing them to wrench away. I look around for an explanation and find it standing statuesquely on an old brick building, her long, black hair in a single tight braid. Her hands are raised in the air, commanding the soil and rock at will. It’s Talia. The Angels have come.
They shoot past us on every side riding sleek and swift hoverbikes, swarming the two remaining cruisers. The rest of us jump back onto the cannons, firing as quickly as possible until the left cruiser crashes into the Thames. The final cruiser backs away still firing, but it’s desperate and confused.
We’ve done it. I run to the wheel and sail the ship toward Talia. Amazing. She pulled what had to have been three hundred feet of the Earth’s crust into the sky to destroy that Synarch. And she did it for London. I breathe easier knowing she’s on my side.
“We did it,” I say to Annie and Jayce, who come racing up to the deck. “We saved—”
“Mother!” cries a voice from the sky. A hoverbike buzzes the deck, heading toward Talia. But Talia can’t be seen. Neither can the tall brick building on which she stood. Both have been devoured by raging flames.
I scan the city, scour the last remaining cruiser. Then I see her, dressed in a black and crimson robe, her long hair whipping with the wind. Her hands are still smoldering with smoke. The fire wizard stands atop one of the cruiser’s decks as it pulls away. I can’t tell if it’s in my mind or if I really do hear the cackle dancing through air. Tanesh, Talia’s daughter, screams for her mother again and again. But the calls go unanswered except by the pops of wood and broken brick. Talia, the speaker for the Angels, is gone.
“What were you thinking?!” bellows my father’s voice. His newly acquired hook jabs me in the shoulder, forcing me to spin around to face him.
“Answer me!” he yells, four inches from my nose.
“He wasn’t thinking!” shouts Linus, hopping off one of the Angel’s hoverbikes. They must have been caught by the Angels as they fell.
“You jeopardized the entire quest and Mira’s future!”
“Dad, I—”
“Shut up!” My father’s face boils red. His veins bulge in his forehead down to his neck. “You dropped us, Horatio! You dropped the music pipe! For what? To save this city? This city isn’t our job! This world isn’t our job!”
“It is for him,” adds Linus. “He’s never cared about the Children. It’s been all about finding a way to save Allen.”
“That’s not true!” yells Annie.
“He threw the pipe and the notes in the fire, Annie! Back at the cellar after Valor told him Allen was on its own. I found them burning when I went there looking for this traitor. Guess he didn’t realize Pock would have protected them from danger. But now he sees the power of the pipe, and he’s going to use it to save his precious hero-worshipping district. Isn’t that right, hero?”
“Don’t you get it?!” howls my father, grabbing my shoulders. “We are losing because of you!”
“You think you could do better?” I yell back, stepping into my father. “You think it’s better to be a coward and hide in the trees?”
I didn’t see it coming because I never would have expected it. Not in a million years. My father’s remaining fist plows across my jaw. I grab Alistair Gaph by the throat and push him back to the railing, bending his body overboard.
“Horatio!”
Linus charges me, ready to strike with the music pipe. But I grab it on the downward swing and yank it out of his hands. He charges again but runs into my thrusting kick. I hear his puny body tumble and drop to the deck. I glare into Alistair Gaph’s eyes.
“You’re a threat to Mira,” he gasps, twisting the fear and anger throughout his face. I think of all the things I could do to him. All the ways I could hurt him. All the ways he deserves to be punished for what he’s done. What they’ve all done. But it wouldn’t be enough. I slap the music pipe against his chest and yank him out of my way.
“Raysh, what are you doing?” cries Annie, trying to pull me off the ship’s railing.
“It’s over, Annie. I’m not gonna fight for them.”
“Raysh, no, please,” she begs, grabbing my arm. “Just tell them!”
“They won’t listen. I’m leaving, Annie. Come with me.”
“Tell them, please!” She whirls to Linus and Alistair. “He was saving you both! Don’t you get it? He saw a way to save you and London! He knew you would survive! Can’t you see that!?”
What I can see is that Annie is, despite the evidence in front of her, all in with the Children of Hamelin. And that puts us at odds. I don’t have the courage to say goodbye. I should have done this back at the red butte. I should have just listened to myself.
“Don’t do this, Raysh. Please don’t. Raysh! Raysh!” She grabs my shirt. “You promised, Horatio! You promised!”
“Am I leaving, Annie? Or are you refusing to come with me?”
She steps back. “Don’t do it, Raysh. Don’t go. It’s wrong.”
I leap overboard and during the fall of three or four hundred feet I flash. Not forward. Backward. To all the times my father and his beloved Children have screwed me over. Ames and Peter. The “knee injury.” Their disregard for this world’s suffering. Being labeled a traitor. Their broken promise to help Allen, even after I got the first Aire. Linus’ clear resentment of me. And now, just because I found a way to save them and London, they call me a threat. I’m done.
I slap into the frigid waters of the Thames, protected against the impact by the sword. All I hear is the wind and splash of the rippling waves against the ruins of the Synarch crusier. I don’t look up. I sheathe my sword and dive deep. Deep enough that the scanning Angels and Hook’s beloved ship can’t spot me. I swim upriver. Towards the center of London. Towards somewhere famous. Somewhere I’ll be easy to find.
15
Wizard King
BIG BEN IS NOT AS TALL AS IT LOOKS IN PICTURES. But it’s tall enough. The four clock faces, still brightly lit and ticking off the passing minutes with a deafening clank, are in fact enormous. The flat iron hands point to 6:30. The sun’s been down for about an hour, and Kensington Gardens still burns in the distance.
It had to have been the sirens. The idiots. Distract the local enforcement for a few seconds to get into the house but alert Special Agent Farr and the entire fleet of Synarch cruisers at his disposal. Don’t they know he’d be looking for anything out of the ordinary anywhere in the world? Well, they got their wish. I’m gone. Someone else’s problem now. Annie should have come with me.
What’s taking so long? Hook’s baggy pants and shirt are still damp and sticky from the swim and the wind here bites me to the bone. I’ve been sitting on the clock tower for more than five hours now with only the bats, which have gradually been building up their numbers since sunset, to keep me company. Does the fact that I’m just sitting here make the wizards nervous? Perhaps they wonder whether I’m at all important to them anymore. I don’t have the pipe. I’m not even looking for anything. Maybe they know what I’m up to and want no part of it. Or maybe leaving the quest was enough for them to leave me alone and go after the ship, Linus, and my father. And Annie. Maybe I’m the stupidest kid ever.
“Quite a dramatic rendezvous, Mr. Gaph, don’t you think?” I jump up at the sound
of the gruff voice I wasn’t expecting. Special Agent Farr pops around the ledge’s corner in full view.
“I didn’t think you knew what rendezvous meant,” I answer.
“You know what I hate more than dramatics? A smart mouth.”
“You and I are going to be best friends, I can tell.”
“Keep it up,” he says, not cracking a smile.
I pull the sword from its sheath and point it to the empty air in front me. I should have thought of this sooner. The guard warms my muscles immediately.
“Aut viam inveniam aut faciam,” says a smooth, foreboding voice behind me. I whirl around fast enough to make the bats squeal and flap their leathery wings. Some of them fly off their hanging perches and fade into the black air. The feminine voice belongs to a woman, leaning against the clock face just yards away. Her bent left knee peeks out from a flowing red cloak that hides the rest of her body and most of her face. Only her small white chin and smiling crimson lips are touched by the light. I know who she is. Even if she hasn’t yet lit her hands on fire. She’s the woman Dexter met on the streets of Revolution. She’s the one who killed Talia.
She laughs. “Nescit cedere.”
“This is my prisoner,” growls Farr. “Get your freak show back in the transport.” But the cloaked wizard seems to pay no attention. Neither do I because I’m more concerned with the newcomers behind Agent Farr. Another woman, petite, topped with short shocking-white hair and warm bronze skin steps up with her arms folded. The bats flutter in the space between her and me for a little more than a moment before they circle around her and fly off into the dark. With her is a giant of a man, with brown skin and black dreadlocked hair with roots of gray crowning his forehead. Tattooed across his broad-nosed face is the eleven-star sign of the wizards. Both of them are dressed in silver and black.
“This is my prisoner!” roars Farr to the other wizards.
“I think you’re in the minority here, Farr,” I say.
The fire woman laughs again. And as much as I want to hate it, I don’t. It’s a nice laugh. Almost kind. And I feel myself freewheeling without the tiniest bit of control over the situation, leaving my insides tangled and boiling.
“Are you bringing me in?” I ask.
“Oh, yes,” she says, a touch of lust in her voice.
“Will I be alive when you do?”
Again the laugh, so pleasant you’d never know what just happened here.
“We are not your enemies, Horatio.”
“My experience tells me otherwise.”
“All can be explained. Now please, if you’ll sheathe your sword, this will be a very pleasant journey.”
“Enough of this! I will not be ignored!” Special Agent Farr marches at me, but the fire wizard ignites one of her hands and points it directly at the Synarch enforcer, tilting her head up enough for the hood of her cloak to reveal her face. She’s beautiful, with striking eyes of orange and flush red lips that match her robe. With Farr silenced, I sheathe the sword, and she stretches her arms out high into the air, where they ignite into orange and yellow flames.
A sleek ship that reminds me more of a bird of prey than the Spirit’s shark circles from around the backside of Big Ben and stops at the ledge right in front of us. I get the feeling they’ve been watching me here for a while. The fire woman waves me into the ship, and with one more look to Agent Farr behind me, I step inside.
It is not unlike the cars that chauffeured me around Revolution when I first arrived. The seats are remarkably comfortable, leather upholstered and black, with plenty of room for the five of us, even with the giant. There are no windows, so I don’t know where I’m going. Probably by design. Our compartment is separated from the driver, so I can’t even see whose hands I’m in, let alone his view of the landscape. As far as I know, we’re not moving at all. This is what I wanted, though. I wanted the wizards to find me.
It doesn’t take long before I realize only Special Agent Farr has plans to talk to me during the trip. And even then, all he wants to talk about is how I had eluded him for the last time. That finally I’ll be brought to justice and he looks forward to making an example out of me. I shut him out.
The others, they know everything there is to know about me, I’m sure, thanks to the second set of eyes trailing me wherever I go. But still, there must be questions. Questions about Pock, about the nine notes and the Aires we’ve been collecting. Even I don’t know what the Aires are for or why Pock has sent us around the world searching for them. And the thing I expect they want to know more about than anything else, the location of the Looking Glass that opens this world to the world of Mira, the very thing I’m looking for. I have no idea where it is. In fact, the more I think about it, the stupider this idea is. I have nothing to offer them.
And I’m getting tired. The plush, warm seats of the transport and Farr’s continuous droning aren’t helping. I’m in the presence of three powerful Children, rogue Children, but Children just the same, with souls intertwined with the greatest power on Earth, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I shake the urge to sleep and spend the first hour of the journey distracting myself by trying to discover each of their powers. The fire woman revealed hers before we left, but the others haven’t even suggested their talents. The obvious choice for the giant is brute strength, and I think that’s part of it, but there’s another shade to his power that’s not as plain. He has a stillness about him that’s startlingly discomforting. His broad chest barely rises and falls with his breath. The rest of his body sits like an alligator in shallow waters, ready to explode at any moment.
The small one is more difficult. I fixed on her short, spiky white hair thinking it was as much of a clue as I needed, but it’s just hair. It wasn’t until I looked closer at the bronzed skin that I started getting an idea of what she can do. Thanks to the visible tan lines when she sat down, I know the color of her skin isn’t what she was born with. So whatever it is, she spends a lot of time in the sun. She’s not used to the cold but must be powerful enough to have been sent to pick me up in London. It isn’t until I notice the small, out-of-place white blotches on the shoulders of her black jumper that I figure it out. Guano. The bats were there on purpose. She has a way with animals.
With the immediate mysteries solved, no hope of getting more information out of my hosts, and the giddy relief working ankles bring, I’m not surprised how quickly I fall asleep or that I don’t remember just how long I was out.
I bolt up out of what is definitely not the plush leather seats I remember sitting in. Instead I feel the linen sheets that drape a soft, wide bed and for a fraction of a second believe that I’m back in my apartment in the Tower, and the entire search for Pock was nothing but a dream. But the gargantuan size of this room and the distant roars seeping along the seams of the curtain-drawn windows get rid of that desperate hope pretty quick. I crack the curtains and immediately regret it. The light pours in and devours me so fiercely, I have to turn away. With a few blinks and using my left hand as a shield from the worst of it, I finally make out my surroundings. Green. Lush and fragrant, covering the high hills surrounding my view. And a vast blue, just beyond those hills, crashing waves echoing through the open air. I’m high above immaculate gardens surrounding this—what? Walls of stone, a tower peeking out from the corner. I’m in a fortress. On an island. The warmth of the sun swallows me, shaking off whatever fatigue I still feel—no, this is more than fatigue. I’ve been worked on. I step closer to the window, spread the drapes wide, and drown in the sun’s warmth, breathing it in.
I’m hungry.
I must have slept all night. At least I hope it was only one night. I feel my blood pump through my chest as I whirl around searching for a calendar, a clock, something that will tell me what day it is. I had six days before the attack on Allen. Despair turns to panic as the rumbling of at least a dozen pair of feet roll
toward my door. I whirl around, looking for my sword, but it’s nowhere. Of course it isn’t. No matter what the cell may look like, I’m a prisoner.
I brace for impact. But instead of the small army barging in through the door, I hear a knock. Then a gentle swing of the hinges reveals my captors.
“Good morning, Horatio,” says the familiar feminine voice of the fire woman. “I’m sure you understand about the need to knock you out.”
“How long?”
“I’m sorry?”
“How long was I out?” I ask with as much condescension as I can muster.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” she responds with equal smugness. “You are impressive, though, aren’t you?” she says, licking her thin red lips while her eyes dance up and down my figure. I only realize now that all I’m wearing is a white wrap spanning from my waist to my knees.
“Now, if you will, Horatio, clean up. Get dressed. I’m confident you’ll find something in the wardrobes to suit you. If you need help,” she adds with a grin full of mischief, “I’m right outside.”
I don’t spend much time picking out my clothes. A white long-sleeve shirt that pulls over my head and hangs loose off my shoulders—it feels a lot like the shirt I borrowed from the ship—and a pair of matching pants that are baggy enough to slide over my legs but hang just above the ankles. No shoes. Probably planned that way. I look for something to eat, hoping my wardens are generous. They aren’t.
“No one’s ever broken Dalek’s trance before,” says the fire woman, leading me out of the door and down the hall. Dalek has to be the giant from the escort. No wonder he was so still. He was concentrating. Concentrating on me, to put me to sleep. My granddad was right. They don’t want me dead. At least not yet.
I hear her breathe a smile as she watches me futilely attempt to work out how long it’s been since the ride here. I give up. I can’t even tell how late in the season we are. Here, everything is lush and green. That’s how they want it. Until they want it differently, I’m in the dark.