The City of Lies (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  My blood ran cold.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” he said. “Word travels; you of all people know that. What, did you think I showed up here by coincidence? Come on. I go to clubs in my off time, not burrito places on the Strand.”

  Of course. He’d appeared up here sans burrito. So caught up in my anger, I hadn’t even stopped to think.

  “Have you told them I’m here?” I asked. Whispered, almost. I struggled to inject volume into the words.

  Emmanuel’s grin widened. Those damned white teeth. What I’d give to just knock the lot of them down his throat—

  “No,” he said after a painfully long pause he plainly relished. “I haven’t said you’re still in London. They did know you were, of course. That took a lot of straightening out, you know. It’s not every day you stroll into the police station where your daughter is being held only to find she’s disappeared from a locked room.”

  The police. Had they continued looking for me after our run-in after the Order of Apdau brandished swords at me and Carson in the middle of a busy London afternoon? Surely they must have. But in all this time we hadn’t been apprehended, so the low-level stress I’d had in the early days immediately after had died off.

  Now, at Emmanuel’s mention of it, it crept back up on me.

  “Where you went after that, though, and the fact you’ve been hanging out here,” Emmanuel went on, “they don’t know.”

  A lie? My eyes darted to the stairs leading down. Mum and Dad might be at the bottom now, or on the way. It would be just like Emmanuel to lord it over me, put me on edge, then lie about this. Give me a false sense of security, then watch my face break as it came crashing down around me. That was exactly the sort of move I expected of him.

  “Relax,” he laughed. “I haven’t told them. No, Meer, I reckon you’re a big girl. Plus,” he added, “you did get the Chalice Gloria.” Another momentary pause, deliberate. “Though word on the grapevine is that you had help.”

  He was prying again.

  I ignored it. More important things.

  “Just what the hell are you doing here, Manny?”

  One last piece of meat, fallen from my burrito in my distracted people-watching, remained. Emmanuel plucked it up between a thumb and forefinger, appraised it. “Just thought I’d check in on my little Meer.” Into his mouth the chicken went. Two chews, a swallow, and he eyed me again. “Is that such a crime?”

  “I want to know how you found me.”

  “I said. Word travels.” At my flat look, Emmanuel laughed. “Come on, Meer. You know Seekers gossip—and you’re making waves. It’s hard to miss what young Mira Brand is up to.” His eyes glittered. The dimple in one cheek reappeared. “Everyone is asking about you. And I’ve got nothing to tell them! Can you imagine?”

  My irritation rose again, now parent worries had been displaced.

  “You don’t get to tell people about me,” I bit off. “You’re just like them.” Mum and Dad. “You never supported me. You were never there for me. You never once—”

  Emmanuel held his hands up. Callouses covered his fingers, hardening his palms. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he cut across. “Come on now. I’m your cool older brother. Cut me some slack here, Meer.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Something in my tone finally caught him, because he didn’t come straight back at me. The self-satisfaction written over his face softened just a touch.

  After a moment, Emmanuel said, “All right. I’m here to offer a proposal. A peace proposal,” he clarified as I opened my mouth. “I am your older brother, you know. And I’d like to help. What is it you’re working on at the moment?” He leaned forward, a pastiche of genuine curiosity. “Maybe I could help; prove I do support you, unlike Mum and Dad.”

  I kept back the sneer that wanted to creep onto my face at that. Unlike Mum and Dad. As if he believed that. He was just saying things he thought would get me to open up.

  I considered calling him out on it, but I was done here. I’d had more than my fill of Emmanuel Brand. This little encounter was enough to last … oh, the next decade, I’d guess.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said shortly, and rose and headed for the stairs.

  “That’s it, then?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You’re not going to join your older brother for another burrito?”

  “I’m not hungry,” I answered without looking back.

  8

  “According to this, the Mirrish are a highly evolved people,” Carson said.

  Hideaway; sprawled around shelves two days after my encounter with Emmanuel.

  I’d been mulling over the run-in. Emmanuel had grated on me—like, a lot. Left me paranoid too; the past two nights hadn’t been great for sleep. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d woken in the shortening space between dusk and dawn, traipsed back into the library, and just watched the wall under the London sign in case a gateway’s antipode appeared, heralding the patron saint of smugness. He hadn’t come, and I was fairly certain he hadn’t followed me … but how could I be sure, really?

  Maybe we needed to move hideaways.

  Or maybe moving the Chalice Gloria would suffice.

  “These journals are really incredible,” Carson cooed, again snapping me from my dazed thoughts. I looked up from where I lolled on my front, feet kicking air behind me, to see Carson brandishing a leather-bound tome like some great prize. He didn’t brandish too hard, mind; the binding appeared to have loosened, so the page edges no longer sat flush with the cover.

  “Whoever wrote them must have been a genius,” he said.

  Heidi was perched adjacent to Carson at the opposite edge of the table he’d pulled a chair to. Her stack of books, like her, was much more diminutive: three piled very neatly, in size order from biggest to smallest, and a fourth in her hands.

  She peered over her pages. “Whoever wrote your books is the same person who discovered and furnished this place, I’d wager,” she said, assessing the library and the empty spots along the wall, decorated only by scrawled signs, with a slow sweeping look. Wariness, just a touch of it, lingered in her voice.

  I twisted too, once again scrutinizing the wall leading back to London.

  “Just as an aside,” Heidi said, “you are aware that there’s no apparent exit leading out to whatever world we’re in now, right?” She said this to me—and now that wariness crept into her eyes too. “It’s like we’re buried in a cave or something.”

  “Mm,” I said. “But it doesn’t look like a cave, does it?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “No,” I ceded. “I don’t think we’re in a cave though.” Shuffling around and onto my backside, I gestured around me. “I’ve looked over every inch of this place—or every inch I could get to, anyway.” An upward glance from both of us, at the high ceiling. “You are right: there’s no obvious exit. But the place was built by someone. It’s thick, made to last. So maybe we’re encased in some cut-off section of an ancient fortress. But a cave? I don’t think—”

  “Can we focus on what’s important instead of asking these pointless existential questions?” Carson suddenly said, cutting me off.

  Heidi and I stared at him. Maybe glared, in Heidi’s case.

  Crimson flushed Carson’s cheeks. “Sorry,” he said. He’d risen halfway in his seat, and now shrunk back into it as though deflating. “I just … they are important questions, I know that. I’m curious too. But we can ask those later, can’t we? And tackle this now?”

  He knocked on the cover of the book at his elbow: the journal in which he’d first read about Ostiagard’s imaginary treasure in. He carried the thing around like he needed it to breathe. I swear, this past week I was fairly certain the farthest it had ever been from him was when it was stashed in his manbag. Heidi had whispered to me that we ought to steal it sometime, just to see what he’d do. It was a cruel sort of joke, but her malice had evaporated since winning the Tide of Ages.

>   I exchanged a look with Heidi, and wondered if perhaps I ought to start counting; these shared glances were starting to add up fast.

  “Sorry, Carson,” I said gently. “You’re right. Hideout questions can wait for another day. Tell us more about the Mirrish.”

  “Right. Thank you. Um.” Carson cleared his throat. Frowning at his page, his eyes roved until he found his place. “Right. So: the Mirrish. The author likens them to lizards. But bigger.”

  “Taller than you,” said Heidi.

  “And bipedal,” Carson went on distractedly. “Anyhow, apparently they invaded Ostiagard—”

  “That’s the end of the anatomy lesson?” Heidi chimed in.

  “—fifteen hundred years ago.” Carson paused. His frown returned, deepening. “Hang on. How did they actually get to Ostiagard in the first place?”

  “Same way as we would.” I lifted my talisman. “Cut a portal.”

  “But Earth is the crossover point, isn’t it?” He screwed his face up. “You said Earth is … like a blanket or something, and that it connects to all the other worlds.”

  Heidi gave me a baffled look. “You called Earth a blanket?”

  “I thought I said a sheet of paper,” I said.

  “Oh, well that’s much better.”

  “I was trying to make an analogy he’d understand.”

  Carson was still talking, apparently oblivious to the interruption. “—compass always shows a place here on Earth when we’re on the other side. So how did the Mirrish get to Ostiagard? Via Earth?”

  “Well done,” Heidi said to me, clapping slowly. “Your failed analogy has fried his brain.”

  I shook my head, rose, and joined them at the table. “Okay, Carson, the way I explained it before—”

  “The blanket on top of, um … marbles?”

  “A sheet of paper on crumpled-up balls of it,” I said.

  “Magical description,” Heidi said.

  I continued, “That’s kind of true. But it’s true in a very one-sided kind of way. You see, our gear—” I lifted my talisman again, letting it rest against my palm so I could feel its soft heat. “Our gear is Earth-centric. Wherever we go, it’s designed to return us to Earth every time.”

  “Unless we find a void,” Carson said.

  “Unless we find a void,” I agreed, nodding. “Other races, though, their gear is designed to bring them back to their worlds.”

  “So if Bub had a ring …”

  “It would take him back to the orc homeworld, yes.”

  “Hmm.” Carson considered this for a long moment. “Then he wouldn’t be exiled anymore.”

  A short quiet pervaded, Carson looking particularly thoughtful.

  I wondered again where Burbondrer had gone. We hadn’t crossed paths with him at all, and he evidently hadn’t returned to the hideaway because Carson hadn’t produced another note for Heidi to translate. I wondered if Carson had come to miss him already, and that was another force driving him so single-mindedly after the hidden treasure of Ostiagard.

  “So if I stole a Mirrish ring,” he said suddenly, “would that let me cut through to their world at any time, in any place?”

  “No,” Heidi and I said together.

  “But—”

  “I understand why that doesn’t make sense to you,” I said, “and it doesn’t make sense to our scholars either. There’s not a lot of research on it, but what we do know is that it just doesn’t work the way you’re suggesting. Earth rings will work fine, but if we picked up a Mirrish ring, or a Vardinn ring, or anything else—nada.”

  “But …”

  “Research it yourself,” Heidi said, and she gestured at the shelves. “I’m sure there’s something in here on the centuries of experiments Seekers have conducted.”

  Carson silenced again. Idle fingers turned around the base of his left index finger—as though turning an invisible ring there.

  Borrick’s ring, perhaps—which had been stowed in his manbag since his last use of it. (Pretty much the only place Heidi and I were willing to let him have it.)

  Was he thinking of it again? The chaotic tears he’d ripped open in the Chalice Gloria’s chamber?

  Maybe he’d finally ask, having stewed for so long …

  But when he spoke again, he was back on topic.

  “So the crossover point to get to the Mirrish homeworld is near Elephant and Castle.” That was a place in Southwark, centered on a busy road junction—the perfect place to cut openings through to other worlds, don’t you think? “Do you think it was actually named that because they had a castle with—”

  “No,” Heidi said, and laughed. “It was named after an inn, not a castle with an elephant or anysuch.”

  “Oh.” Carson looked disappointed. Still: “London has some really interesting names, though.”

  “Absolutely,” said Heidi, dry. “‘Cockfosters’ is a magical name, all right.”

  Carson hardly took it in. Eyebrows pressed together, he said, “We’ll need the elvish rope.”

  Both Heidi and I groaned. “Why?” I asked.

  “We’re going to need to descend into Mirrish ruins. If this journal is right, anyway.”

  “A journal has never been wrong before,” Heidi muttered.

  I kicked her under the table. She shot me a sour look, but quieted.

  “Anything else?” I asked Carson.

  “Well …” He drew the word out awkwardly. “There might be one other thing …”

  9

  I swam through a sea of white alive with rainbow fireworks, dancing, dancing—

  And then I was out, and all I saw was green.

  To be fair, I had expected it. The compass had shown a full blanket of forest, only the vaguest hints of buildings constructed within it. But seeing a tiny visage of it, versus stepping into the scene directly and getting to see it with my own eyes—there was a valley of difference in those things.

  I bumped into Carson, awestruck.

  The forest towered, air thick and pungent with earth and green. Thick trees were draped in great vines, pastel green and tangled like enormous nets. The trunks were the dark color of moss—and appeared to be covered in the stuff too. Instead of bark, the vast wood columns appeared to be furred. The canopy was dense, but somehow light filtered through the crisscrossing leafy fronds that sprouted around the trees’ very last few meters, surely bus-sized if not larger.

  But most interesting of all was the way the Mirrish city had been built into the forest. Hodgepodge buildings were nestled between the trees wherever nature allowed. As tall or squat as they were permitted to be, the greyish buildings—stone, I thought—were entirely inconsistent. One might be wide and long, squeezed into a thin line; the next looked like each story was a building block, the middlemost brick in a three-block stack offset from the others. Small circular windows had been cut into most buildings. Not one was filled with glass.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled to Carson—

  He eased backward.

  I stumbled, knocking whatever surface we’d come out of. Twisting to see, I met a stone brick façade—

  And realized the Mirrish had built a madcap road through the forest.

  I ogled for a moment, tracking it underfoot. It weaved, not remotely straight, following the path the forest had allowed—

  And then someone said, “Hello,” in a voice I didn’t recognize.

  Carson pressed back.

  “Uh!” I complained, and shoved him aside.

  If I expected an apology, I didn’t get one. Carson was too preoccupied with—

  The Mirrish. The street was alive with them, walking in ones and twos.

  Green-skinned and tall, they were indeed bipedal creatures reminiscent of lizards—and they looked damned awkward for it. Pitched forward, their torsos slanted away from their legs. Long, thick tails touched the ground, dragging along enough that I wouldn’t want to closely follow one of the Mirrish lest I step on it. More than once, probably. And weren’t some lizards back home
able to detach their tails and regrow them to escape prey? Talk about a faux pas, accidentally causing the loss of a Mirrish tail.

  The lizard who’d greeted us was just passing. His yellow eyes flicked over us, and his mouth lifted at the corners, a not-quite-perfect approximation of a smile; then he was past.

  I assumed he was a he, based on the voice; the clothes weren’t anything to go by. It was clad in a shell of petals, stitched together at the back and front. This particular individual wore garish hues of pink and blue. Another, passing in the opposite direction, was a very vibrant yellow that made my eyes hurt to look at.

  It glanced our way as it approached. “Hello.” Another smile, perfectly cheerful, before it passed.

  A third and fourth—a couple I guessed, because they were holding … hands? Claws?—greeted us too:

  “Hello.”

  “Hello!”

  Carson had edged right back into me again, and stepped on my toes.

  I pushed him aside, grunting.

  “Sorry,” he breathed. “They’re, err … friendly, aren’t they?”

  As if on cue, another passing Mirrish gave us a pleasant hello. If (s)he, or indeed any of the others, were perturbed that none of us were replying, they made no comment, and nor did unease register on their faces. They just moved right along, continuing up and down this weaving street.

  “None of them are talking to each other,” Heidi pointed out under her breath.

  “And how come they all speak English?” Carson whispered. “The journals didn’t say anything about that.”

  Another lizard said happily, “Hello,” as it passed us by.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But they’re not a threat.” I tried to keep it quiet, racking my brain for any applicable knowledge that might carry over from lizards on our world. Were they hard of hearing? Did they sense via vibrations?

  After a few more hellos, which I did my best to smile and return, Carson unpeeled himself from my side. Frittering in his manbag with both eyes trained on the Mirrish, he eventually wrangled what he was after: his cell phone.