“Okay, here we are,” Kate says. “Ready?”
“When you are,” Gabriel says. He tightens his hands on the wheel and concentrates on the road so as not to lose speed—or control of the van.
Kate shoves the chosen portal into the slot in the dashboard, and everything goes blurry outside the windows for three seconds. When the scenery clears, they find themselves on a lonely road that is as straight as the previous one was winding.
“Oh, good, no more curvy mountain road,” Gabriel says. “Thank you.”
“I thank you also, and my stomach thanks you,” Christopher says. He stares at the TV screen and waits; no letters appear. For the moment, they seem to have gotten free of the ghost messages.
“So where and when are we?” Gabriel asks.
“Just a couple minutes forward, and a couple hundred miles away,” Kate says. “Enough to break continuity but not enough to be too disruptive. Hopefully.”
Gabriel pulls the van over to the side of the road, stirring up dust and crunching gravel under the tires. He shuts off the engine to give it a rest. He leans back on the driver’s seat, puts up his feet on the dashboard, and lets out a long breath.
“Are you tired? I can drive if you want,” Kate says.
“Nah, I’m good to drive,” Gabriel says. “We just need to take a moment here. I think it’s safe to assume that Monder and his helpers are getting better and better at detecting that fragment you’ve got there.”
Kate touches the pendant around her neck. “And they are getting faster at it,” she adds. “Every time we think we’ve gotten away, they find us even more quickly.”
“So the question now is, how can we play this to our advantage?” Gabriel says. “Let’s play out this scenario. The obvious assumption is this: Monder wants to get his tentacles on both fragments. Rumor has it, he has one. He now seeks the other one, and of course we want Henry. The fact that we possess the other fragment is our leverage.”
“Right,” Christopher says. “So we should get Monder so fixated on this fragment that he gives away Henry’s location. If we can lead Monder to believe that he knows where the other fragment is, and he tries to get it, maybe he tips his hand.”
“Right,” Gabriel says. “As long as we have this thing, and we can keep it, Monder has to bargain with us. Also, as long as he still needs that piece, he probably won’t hurt Henry. We have to find a way to mislead him without giving ourselves away.”
“But why did Monder go after Henry?” Kate asks. “Why not come after me instead? I’m the one with the fragment. Why not just take a run at me directly?”
“Henry’s Guild, dear,” Gabriel says. “And he’s not your garden-variety Guild, either. No, there’s more to this. There’s information involved, more than just that broken portal necklace. Guild kids can draw maps, write codes, put down information that they don’t even understand. Monder knows that. He knows Henry’s capabilities. I just wish we could figure out how Henry fits in.”
“I suggest,” Christopher says, “that we set ourselves up to detect incoming signals and trace them back, so the next time our harasser decides to send us a love note we can jump on it and try to find out where it’s coming from.”
“Splendid idea, kid brother,” Gabriel says.
“Oh man, I wish that Silver Shard was a real thing,” Kate says, leaning her forehead on the passenger window. “How beautiful would that be—to use the fragment as Monder bait, find Henry, destroy the fragment. I guess that’s wishing for too much, isn’t it?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Gabriel says. “Let’s see if Anna really has a lead on this Silver Shard or if this is just another case of her having mystical feelings. We can keep the whole magic axe idea in our back pocket.”
Helen has fallen silent, cross-legged on the floor of the van, absorbing the conversation instead of peppering her family with her usual questions. In her mind she turns the situation over and over, as if she were hacking into a device or a component of some kind. There’s Henry, and the Guild, and there’s Monder, and one fragment, and then the other fragment. And this mythical Shard. The pieces turn, come apart, fit together. She keeps coming back to the thought: “Monder bait.”
Don’t you worry, little brother. I’m going to make this right.
Henry sits propped up at his tiny desk, his eyes bleary from another long day of drawing in the big white room. He holds a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in both hands, staring forward with a blank expression while he chews and swings his feet back and forth.
A sound. Like a shuffling, maybe. Something sliding. He looks around, but the sound stops. He goes back to chewing.
The sound again. This time he notices a little square of light on the floor, there, and then gone again.
Henry creeps off his chair and sits down on the floor next to where the light appeared, and waits.
There it is again, the sliding sound. A square opening appears in the wall, down by the floor. Like a tiny door, sliding open and closed. Open, the light comes through, closed, it disappears again.
Henry gets down on all fours and peers at the spot in the wall where the opening was. He nearly jumps out of his skin when it slides open again and there’s a girl’s face inside.
“Oh! You are there. And awake,” the girl says. She’s got dark curly hair around her face and huge brown eyes.
“Hello?” Henry says.
“Hello,” the girl says.
“I saw you in the hall,” Henry says. “You kept running away.”
“I didn’t mean to,” the girl says. “I was just—there. The hall is an illusion, you know.”
“An illusion?” Henry says.
“Yes, kind of like this little hole, here,” the girl answers.
Henry rubs his eyes. It is possible that he has lost his mind. The door, if that’s what it is, slides shut again and he finds himself alone. Loneliness can make a mind do funny things.
“Darn,” Henry says, peering at the wall. He really liked not being alone, even if he was talking to a figment.
The door slides open again. “You’ve got to focus!” the girl scolds him. “If you don’t focus, we get disconnected. So keep looking at me, okay? Don’t look away.”
“Uh, okay,” Henry says. “If you’re on the other side of the wall, why don’t I just come next door and we can talk without lying on the floor?”
“But we’re not,” the girl says. “We’re not next door at all. I don’t know where you are, really. Keep looking at me!”
Henry blinks, but keeps looking. The girl looks familiar, and not just from the hall. He can’t place her.
“I’m glad I found you,” the girl says. “It’s not easy, creating an opening.”
“Creating an opening?” Henry says. “What is this? Why are you talking to me through a hole?”
“You’re not supposed to be able to see me,” the girl says. “We’re supposed to think we are alone. But we’re Guild, aren’t we?We can see better than they think. We’ve just got to try, is all.”
“Right, we’ve just got to try,” Henry says. “Guild have to look out for one another, don’t we?” He’s on his stomach now, head on his fists, looking straight at the girl through the wall.
“Yes, that’s important,” the girl says. “It’s important to stay connected. So come to this spot, at the end of each day, and we’ll talk. Okay?”
“Okay,” Henry says. “I’m Henry, by the way.”
“I’m R-Renata. My name is Renata,” the girl says.
“Nice to meet you, R-Renata,” Henry says. Then he feels bad. What if she’s got a stutter and he just made fun of her?
The tiny door slides shut again before he can apologize. Henry sits on his chair and retrieves his sandwich. His body feels better, not so achy. He’s got more energy. He is not alone.
Anna Helena Silverwood could not look more out of place than she does in the gleaming, ornate lobby of a high-rise building. Busy professional people jostle by her in fancy shoes that click a
cross the marble mosaic on the floor, nothing like her own clunky boots. She looks like a survivalist in her dark green cargo pants and well-worn button-down cotton shirt. In another time, someone in the clan would have briefed Anna before she came here, equipping her with appropriate attire for her destination and explaining what she ought to expect. But Briefings don’t happen any more—she’s on her own. And Anna really doesn’t care right now about proper wardrobe choices.
This is just one building, among a vast number of other buildings, in a city Anna knows very little about. She looks around at the carved woodwork and elaborate ceiling and the beautiful diamond shapes cut from stone and inlaid into the floor but can’t place the architecture. The portal that she got from Mr. Brett at the pawn shop could have brought her anywhere. Chicago? San Francisco? London? It doesn’t matter.
Anna knows her father must be somewhere nearby; she just has to figure out where. She avoids eye contact with the security guards parked at a tiny desk and heads for the elevator bank. She locates the utility elevator, last one on the right, and presses the button to go down into the basement.
Before the doors can close a fellow in gray coveralls with a huge dolly stacked high with computers rolls in. Anna glances over the computers to get an idea of their vintage, revealing a little about what year she might be visiting. The monitors are putty-colored and big and square. That’s a clue. The CPUs themselves have floppy drives in them. That’s another clue.
“How you doin’?” the man says. The doors slide shut.
“Good,” Anna replies without looking at him. “You?”
“Oh, you know, this n’ that.” He flashes a grin. “Soon as I get these to one place, they’re gonna want ‘em in another.”
“Yeah, isn’t that how it goes,” Anna says.
The elevator bumps to a stop.
“Well, see ya,” the man says, and rolls the computers out through the door.
“Okay,” Anna says. So the wardrobe choice wasn’t as bad as she thought. Turns out she looks like a pretty convincing maintenance person. Anna files this in her mind for future reference.
She heads down the hall in the opposite direction from the man with the dolly. She scans the walls on either side of the basement hallway. The woodwork is elaborate even down here: panel after panel adorned with fancy edging and carved corners. Anna can see why her father chose this spot; it offers so many places to hide.
Anna wonders how her father is doing, and what he will look like.
Anna runs her finger along the wall, while holding the portal in her other hand. The portal is very warm, letting her know how close she is to her destination. In fact it’s a bit uncomfortable to hold. These older portals can overheat sometimes, and she needs it to travel back. So she drops it into her pocket. She will know if it goes cold and she needs to change direction.
Anna moves closer to the wall to scan it. Sure enough, one panel seems slightly raised from the others, the stain in the wood a tiny bit lighter. Perhaps this is the spot.
What if it is? Anna will come face to face with her father for the first time since…
She presses on the underside of the molding and the panel gives way. It swings into the wall and Anna steps into a hidden compartment. In complete darkness she can feel the tiny space turning until she stands in a recess now facing into a room.
More than a room it’s a long, narrow, claustrophobic space stuffed full of bookshelves and glass cases and filing cabinets. There’s dark wood paneling like in the hallway, and leaded windows run along the top of one wall where the space meets up with the sidewalk outside. The light coming through these windows shifts constantly with the shadows of passing feet. Yellowing, bare light bulbs hang at even intervals along the ceiling. Hatboxes and cases for musical instruments mix with mannequin parts on the floor. The space feels like the neglected home of a world-traveling hoarder.
The only path through the mess is a narrow clearing down the center of an oriental rug, leading toward a tiny grayish-green metal desk at the opposite end of the room. Behind that sits a massive, high-backed, black leather chair, facing away from Anna and surrounded on three sides by dozens of shoulder-high precarious stacks of papers and envelopes.
“Hello, Daddy,” Anna says.
The chair does not move right away but eventually begins to turn. As it comes around it emits awful squeaking noises and upsets several paper stacks, which then cascade onto the desk and the floor.
The man occupying the chair— Julian Silverwood, Anna’s father— has dark red hair, like she does. He keeps it swept up and away from his face. He’s got stubble on his chin, but that has gone gray. He’s ruddy, like Anna. He wears a dark suit tailored to fit his broad shoulders, along with a white shirt and narrow tie. Solid. Strong. Tired. He looks so, so tired. And he looks much older.
“You’re here,” he says. He takes her in with his bright blue eyes for a long moment. Finally he says, “You look good. Life at sea must have agreed with you.”
“I guess,” Anna says. “The place looks…nice,” she adds, surveying the room.
“No, it doesn’t,” Julian snaps. “It looks terrible. It’s a complete disaster.” A few papers flutter off of the desk and onto the floor as if to support his statement.
“Let me help you,” Anna says, stooping to pick up two handfuls of documents and trying not to appear nervous. “Maybe I can sort some of this…”
“It’s too late,” her father says. “The Conservatory has been crushed under the weight of neglect and apathy. There’s nothing to be done now.”
A few envelopes slide into a slot installed in one of the windows. They flutter to the floor.
“See?” he says, standing and pointing. “Another notification. Another delivery. It never ends. Ruptured time. Knots and tangles and portals being misused. I can’t keep up. No one can. There’s no one to fix all of this. I just keep it here, out of sight. The Conservatory isn’t a resource any more; no one comes here for anything. It’s just—a repository. The Silverwood garage. No—the Silverwood junk yard.”
“There has to be someone who can help,” Anna says. “Not all of the Watchmakers are gone. You can’t possibly be the only one left.”
“It would take thousands of Watchmakers to fix this mess,” Julian says, pacing. “New ruptures every day—Tromindox jumping around at will without closing up the portals—and I don’t have to tell you about the problems presented by those stupid fragments. What an idea that was. Create a field out of time. Send somebody through it. Break the portal. Great. But, then what? No one, no one thought that through, or considered the effect that a one-way rift of that magnitude might have.” He stops pacing and looks at his daughter. “You’ve handed the thing off to the next fragment bearer, I suppose?”
“Yes, I have, Daddy,” Anna says.
“And who was the lucky winner?” her father asks.
“Kate.”
Julian’s face darkens. His eyes narrow. “Oh.”
“And Daddy, I need the Shard.”
Julian’s face remains the same. “Oh.”
“Look, Daddy, I know how you feel about Kate. I know you don’t like hearing her name.”
“What do you need the Shard for?” Julian asks.
“To fix one of the messes,” Anna says. “The big mess. The one we created with the fragments. It’s falling apart, Daddy, like you said. We’ve got to do something—fast. It’s getting worse. I ‘ve had a message that Kate’s son Henry has been taken. Henry is Guild, but he’s only a child. Look, you were right. And I’m here to tell you, face to face, I’m going to fix it.”
“You can’t do that alone,” Julian says. “The Tromindox are evolving fast. They will swarm you, and you’ll never have a chance. You have to have help.”
“I know, Daddy. That’s why I’m here. And that’s why Kate is going to help me.”
“Help you? Kate Silverwood is supposed to help you? Do I need to remind you what she did, Anna Helena? Are you out of your mind? Have you
gone crazy?”
“Daddy…”
“No! Don’t you ‘Daddy’ me!” Julian comes out from behind the desk, papers flying onto the floor all around him. “Kate Silverwood destroyed my life, Anna. And she destroyed yours. She took your mother from you, my wife. The woman I had built my life with. Who in turn gave you life. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m skeptical that Kate is going to help you.”
Anna straightens up to her full height. “Dad, you know as well as I do that Kate did not murder Mom. Kate was deceived. And Mom was in contact with the Tromindox…”
“Your mother was not a traitor!” Julian shouts.
Anna well remembers that when she was small, her father’s raised voice could send her running to hide her head under her pillow. But now, she has been on a ship, at sea, by herself, for five years. She has sacrificed to keep the fragment safe, to do her duty for the clan. In short, she has grown up. And now, she needs to talk to her father on equal footing.
“Dad, what I know is, the rift where Monder was sent is falling apart, and soon it will disintegrate. If we do nothing and sit around amongst piles of paper and artifacts and feel sorry for ourselves, we will go extinct. We will lose everything. I am willing to do something. Kate is willing to do something.”
Julian looks at the young woman in front of him. He knows she is serious. Like her mother, she doesn’t give up once she has made up her mind.
“I don’t have the Shard,” Julian says.
Anna looks around her. “You don’t have it? Are you sure…? I mean, could it be in here? It’s kind of…” She reaches down and lifts up the lid of a guitar case on the floor. Nothing but a guitar. She lets the lid fall.
“A mess, I know,” Julian says. “But I am the Conservator, and I know exactly what objects are in this room. And the Shard is not one of the objects in this room.”
“What happened to it?” Anna asks. “Do you know where it is?”
“I know precisely where it is,” Julian answers. “I sent it away.”
“I need to know where it is,” Anna says. “Dad, I need it. Quickly.”
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