Elliot smoothed out a folded corner of the rug.
‘This, it has always been,’ he repeated. There was nobody nearby. He lowered his voice. ‘What about Prince Chyba?’ he said.
‘Prince Chyba?’
‘All the other Royals, you’ve got something against—well, you haven’t mentioned the little Prince, but he’s just a kid—but Prince Chyba, what’s your issue with him?’
Chime tilted her head, so the moonlight formed a patch on her neck. ‘We have nothing against him. He seems a fine young man. He’s intelligent. He likes music, animals, the idea of peace.’
Elliot turned his body to face her in the darkness. ‘Well, then,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Prince Chyba is heir. Sounds like he’d make a great king. Why not just wait for him?’
‘Don’t you see?’ Chime had stopped whispering but her voice stayed low. ‘That’s the point. Even the best should not rule simply because he is heir. This is why now is the time to stop this, before Chyba becomes King. Support for the Hostiles will dwindle when he does, and then what? His firstborn is a tyrant? Or a hapless party-guy like the current King, so everything is run by the Elite. This, and it must end now.’
Elliot looked into the darkness. ‘I would never kill a person,’ he said.
‘You wouldn’t have to. Did we not send the Royals to the World to start new lives? Is that ruthless killing? Elliot, inside your heart, you are strong and brave. You ask questions and thus, you become your own person. Find your own person. He’s not a killer, but neither does he allow his Kingdom to be ruled by darkness. Does he? But look.’
She leaned forward and the triangle of moonlight vanished abruptly. ‘Here they are. Lions. Females. Behind them, panthers, more lions, male. And that’s a score at least of leopards coming next.’
Elliot heard himself gasp. Impossibly, cats of every size were striding past right below him. Immense tigers, sleek panthers, tumbling cubs, haughty little cats, some wild, some domestic, some slinking low as if to practise stalking. Some cats played, leaping onto the backs of others, but most strode, silent, a stately swing to their shoulders. Panthers strolled together like shadows weaving.
Chime murmured the names: most he’d heard of, some were strange to him. There were cheetahs, snow leopards, clouded leopards, star-eyed bobcats, tawny jaguars. There were rabbit-eared sarcs, Golden Coast ocelots, coastal horned wildcats, and a single blackfooted wolf-cat of Olde Quainte.
For a while, Elliot was mesmerised by paws—the vicious curve of claws against the big, vulnerable softness—and then he was taken by the moonlight on their whiskers, the variety of tails—some flicking or curling, some snaking, some standing straight like fur-lined flags—and then by their eyes, narrow, wide, round, golden, caramel, green. The smaller cats had fine and pretty features, the larger seemed grim, heavy-hearted and impossibly wise.
Elliot was a Farms boy so he was used to animals, and he’d seen a cougar or two in his time, once even had to climb a haystack when a Sugarloaf lynx got into the barn looking angry. So he hadn’t expected to think much about these wild cats. But wonder lay across his chest right where that sash had been. The more cats that passed, stately or sinuous, midnight blue or rich orange, the more he wanted. He wanted this to never end. Just keep right on walking by, you beautiful cats.
He could hear his breath speeding up. The wonder was piling on his chest, until it seemed like it might crack his ribs. It was forming its own steep ridge. It seemed like sobs of happiness were rising inside him too, and he trembled with this. There were tears in his eyes. Chime squeezed his hand.
That ridge across his chest grew higher. Its edges sharpened. Its weight was getting out of control. He turned away from the Cat Walk and looked towards the forest, to give himself a break. But the ridge kept right on sharpening, and there was something ferociously commonplace about it, and then he was tearing off his mask, he was tearing off his mask, and Chime’s hands were over his mouth, and somewhere remote the sound of her hoarse urgency, ‘Stay quiet, stay still, stay quiet.’
They were peeling his skin in smooth, swooping curves, and he was rocking in Chime’s arms, pressing his teeth into his lip to hold onto screams. ‘Stay quiet,’ she pleaded, ‘stay quiet,’ and he saw himself running, hand-in-hand with the Girl-in-the-World, a memory of the shape of her, a twilight road, and it was gone.
The attack was fading. His eyes were still closed. He tasted blood.
‘It’s okay,’ Chime murmured. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ in her low humming voice, and behind his closed eyes he saw his skin slip away, and himself clean, blinking paleness. He kept rocking but more slowly, and there were sudden twitches of his body, frightened of what had just happened, and little jumps of his breath like the residue of weeping.
‘Open your eyes,’ Chime whispered, but he kept them closed and thought of the skin of the cats, how some were tight and sleek, some rumpled, but all the wild cats were right inside their skins. He thought of Chime and how she’d taken him into a Colour cavern to kill him, she’d inflicted this pain on him, even though she was a friend, and that was because she was so much in her own skin. Her skin was her belief.
He thought of Mischka Tegan, or whatever her name was, and all that she’d done for her beliefs, how she’d tricked Elliot’s dad and had his uncle killed, and how she’d almost been executed, but she was still on her way back to the Hostiles.
That much belief, and the sureness of Chime’s eyes, and he wanted the same thing: the passion, the completeness. His life had been waking and sleeping, losing and fighting, and all the time he’d been just walking on the surface, never inside life, the way these wild cats were, the way Chime was. He’d never got under his own skin.
His father and his uncle had been wrong: he saw that now. The fact was, the Royals twisted and poisoned the Kingdom, the same as the Greys had done to him. To live inside life was to go after the poison.
I got him, Elliot thought. I got my Elliot Baranski.
He opened his eyes. ‘I want to join the Hostiles,’ he said.
1
When the King came to live in Bonfire, things began to crackle and spark.
The King tapped two fingers against his own forehead. Or against the palm of his other hand. Or the shoulder of the person standing closest to him.
He spun on the spot, and strode up and down the stairs like someone doing exercise. His head hunched in thought then sprang up, eyes alight.
They held meetings in the Baranski farmhouse and the King took control of every detail: how chairs should be arranged, when food should be served, what music played. He chose songs with electric guitar riffs, turning up the volume so everybody had to shout.
He handed out assignments to the agents, Tovey and Kim, to the Sheriff and Jimmy, to Abel and Petra Baranski.
‘Get in touch with Carver Heywick, he owes me a favour—best way to do it is join his poker game . . .’
‘Here’s what you do. You find Sawhi Khai at the Vapours Head and you play three games of snooker with her—it’s got to be three, no more, no less—after that, you buy her a drink—whisky sour . . .’
‘There’s a guy I know who’ll take care of those guards at the crackpoints—he’s the best there is, no, wait, I’ll tell you who’s better . . .’
He’d stop, bow his head, tap faster, then look up and rattle off a phone number.
He asked Keira to send messages to Princess Ko via her ring, and to Madeleine in the World. He didn’t ask anything of the other young people. ‘You’ve got homework and farms to run,’ he told them. ‘But keep coming to the meetings. You’re good value.’
*
The King was charming. He fixed people with his gaze then looked away abruptly, so you wondered how to get the gaze back. He’d learned all their names almost instantly. He’d stop halfway through shouting instructions, pick up a beer and tip it back. They’d watch him swallow: glug-glug-glug. ‘You Farmers know how to brew as well as bake!’ he’d shout, grabbing handfuls of bottles
, tossing them around the room.
His spins of thought would turn themselves into dance moves. One night, he found Petra’s guitar in the laundry closet. After that, he strummed through meetings: setting the guitar down and picking it back up became part of his frenetic routine.
Also, he questioned everything. It reminded Keira of her history teacher, the way he’d get under the surface with his shoulder.
‘Now, the court that signed my daughter’s death warrant,’ he said one night, beating out a rhythm on his knees. ‘How does it have jurisdiction over the Royal Family? Why can we not appeal the decision to the Cellian High Court? Wasn’t Ko’s fraud on the Kingdom justified in the circumstances? Can’t we issue some kind of urgent stay?’
The Sheriff and Jimmy said they’d follow up with lawyer friends.
‘Why does the W.S.U. have so much power, anyhow?’ the King asked another night, with a violent strum of the guitar. He set the guitar down and looked around. ‘They can stop the Royal Family coming back from the World? I can’t just pick up a phone and tell them to quit it? Am I not the freakin King of Cello!’
Petra Baranski, who had expertise about World–Cello relations, spoke up in her calm voice. ‘It’s like this. In the seventeenth century, when the plague came through from the World and spread outside our borders, we were under fire for letting it in. We were officially reprimanded by the United Assembly. The Aldhian foreign minister called for military strikes against us. He got a standing ovation. That kind of thing.’
Petra was stacking cake plates as she spoke. ‘The cracks were sealed and the W.S.U. established, but over the years, as the plague continued to rage, there were calls for us to take more action. There was chaos here in Cello at the time,’ she added. ‘The heir to the throne, a Prince Tobin, had vanished. People thought maybe Aldhibah had kidnapped him.’
‘The missing Royal,’ Keira put in. ‘His mandolin turned up in an Aldhian junkyard years later.’
Petra nodded. ‘Exactly. Anyhow, Cello agreed to make the W.S.U. a separate arm of government, independent of royalty, with absolute power to seal ourselves off from the World. It can’t be dissolved, except with the consent of Aldhibah.’
The King plucked a tune on the guitar.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘get me the Deed that established the W.S.U. Get me their Articles of Association. Let’s see if we can’t find a loophole.’
‘I’ll look into it,’ Petra agreed.
‘And who’s the current Director?’ The King turned to Tovey and Kim. ‘What have we got on him?’
Tovey and Kim grinned. They’d been talking to key figures in the W.S.U. without luck. It hadn’t occurred to them to go so high as the Director.
The King pointed to the ceiling. ‘Always start at the top,’ he said.
*
Within a couple of days, Tovey and Kim had travelled out of town, following up on the King’s leads. Abel was making day trips to Loyalist enclaves. Keira was constructing her transponder rings for everyone. And, late at night, speaking to Sergio, who passed messages to Princess Ko. ‘We’ll rescue the friends as well, of course,’ the King said. ‘Sergio and Samuel. Ask what medical provisions we need to arrange for Samuel. That’s the sick one, right?’
The Sheriff and Jimmy were drawing up various legal documents at the King’s request. ‘What in the heck is this one for?’ the Sheriff would ask as he handed over another, and the King would laugh: ‘All part of the plan.’
*
One night, Jimmy asked if they could turn down the music, as he had something to say.
Everyone was there: Abel just back from the north, and Tovey and Kim between inter-provincial meetings.
Jimmy cleared his throat.
‘As you know,’ he said, ‘Isabella Tamborlaine disappeared the day the W.S.U. came to town. I guess most folks believe she reported Elliot and then took off.’
There was a careful quiet. People tried to keep their faces blank.
‘I’ve kept right on believing in Isabella.’ Jimmy held onto his voice, but only just. ‘On account of, I loved her very much. I’ve been thinking that her disappearance is unrelated to Elliot—just a coincidence of timing. I’ve been calling in and sending out missing persons reports. Speaking to teachers at the school. Following up on her past.’
His shoulders sagged. He noticed this, seemed annoyed, and straightened.
‘Teachers at school didn’t offer much,’ he said, ‘except to confirm the worst. Seems Elliot had been asking Isabella how cracks worked. I still didn’t see that as proof—so she knew he had an interest in the World? I said to myself—doesn’t mean she betrayed him. But then, as I said, I looked into her past. And . . .’
He was speaking to the skirting boards now.
‘Isabella doesn’t exist,’ he said hoarsely. ‘She went to teachers’ college, sure, and learned to be a physics teacher—that’s all real. But before that? Not a single record. No family. No certificate of birth. The papers she used to apply for college were all forged.’
He looked up and his face, which had seemed fragile, was grim and grey as stone.
‘Seems she was a Hostile all along, and I’m real sorry . . .’ He raised his voice again, looking to Petra and Abel. ‘I’m real sorry that my girlfriend put your son in so much danger.’
‘Ah, you can’t be apologising for the things people close to you do,’ Petra murmured.
Jimmy sat back down and turned to the King. ‘Thanks for letting me interrupt,’ he said. ‘Carry on with your meeting.’
The King slid the guitar to the floor and jumped to his feet. ‘You know what you need, Jimmy? A special drink I invented back in college. I’m going to make it for you right now. Guaranteed to disappear the past and make things brighter. Got any rum, Petra? And I’ll need apple liqueur, G.C. teakwater, and what else? Well, a whole lot of other stuff.’ He reached out and mussed Jimmy’s hair like a parent. Jimmy cracked a tiny smile.
2
The night before the Day of Mighty Rescue (as the King liked to call it), Keira stood out the front of Gabe’s farmhouse.
She watched as the Sheriff’s car bumped down the driveway, then as it turned into the street and disappeared.
It was after midnight but still warm enough for a sundress.
Keira felt good.
The meeting earlier at the Baranski farmhouse had been more festive than ever. The King had suggested they hold it outside, under the stars, so they could hose each other down while they talked. He’d personally lugged out the soundplayer and boxes, turning the music loud so that the jemima birds woke and broke into frantic shouting.
Everything was in place.
Tovey and Kim were waiting in Tek, Jagged Edge, where Princess Ko was being held. A team of Loyalists and former security agents were heading there now to assist in the rescue.
Meanwhile, the King had arranged for the W.S.U. guards at all three crackpoints to be bribed or blackmailed. They would abandon their posts for ten minutes at pre-arranged times. Another agent had acquired a crack detector, and would use this to bring Princess Jupiter and the Queen across at the two locations in Ducale, Golden Coast. Next, a Royal Pilot would fly, by superspeed chopper, to McCabe Town in Nature Strip, where Prince Chyba would be collected. All rescued Royals would be delivered to Bonfire.
Keira herself had just returned from speaking with the Girl-in-the-World. That was the only glitch, she thought, frowning. Madeleine still didn’t have confirmation that either the Queen or Prince Chyba would actually come to the crackpoints.
Sometimes Keira wanted to reach through to the World and shake that Madeleine. Did the girl think one out of three was good enough? Why hadn’t she just gone over to wherever the Queen and Chyba were (‘Taipei’ and ‘Boise’, she remembered—they did look sort of far on the World maps, but that was the point of transport) and convinced them?
Maybe Worldians were sort of slow, like Farmers. Actually, Keira had been noticing that Farmers often had flashes of smart insi
de their slowness. As if the slow was a framework for the fast. Whereas Madeleine prattled in her scribble and threw her temper everywhere, but behind all that, her thoughts must drag like slugs.
Still, the King didn’t seem troubled. Each time Keira mentioned her concern, he’d smile glintingly, as if he knew something she did not. ‘They’ll be there,’ he’d say, and she believed him.
By this time tomorrow night, just about the whole Royal Family would be partying at the Baranski house. The only one missing would be little Prince Tippett, but he was safe in the Magical North with his nanny—actually, Keira wouldn’t be surprised if the King had been secretly organising to whisk the kid here too, just to complete the reunion.
Keira rubbed her eyes. She’d adjusted to day-dweller hours now, so she was tired.
She ran up the stairs to the farmhouse porch, turned her key in the front door and stepped inside.
3
There were voices in the kitchen.
Her heart tumbled back down the stairs.
With all the chaos of the last weeks, she’d completely forgotten about Gabe’s parents. She’d stopped worrying they might turn up one day.
She backed away, feeling for the door handle.
A light switched on. Gabe stood in the open kitchen door, looking at her.
He beckoned. She shook her head. He beckoned harder.
She walked down the hall. What had he told them about her? Had he pretended she was someone else? But everyone in town thought she was his cousin!
Gabe went back into the kitchen. The turn of his shoulders was angry. She followed him.
The room smelled of cigarettes and whisky. A small figure was hunched in a chair. An empty tumbler and quarter-full bottle of whisky sat on the table.
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