The Tide of Ages (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 2)

by Robert J. Crane

  Carson frowned. Then he conceded, “Even if it were a waterworld, technically it’s not endless.”

  “I’m not sure technicalities like that matter as far as riddles are concerned,” I said.

  “Hmm.” He removed his glasses, polishing them against his sweater. I resisted the urge to tell him off—it’d do a number on the anti-scratch coating. Then again, just a few days ago we’d been buffeted by sand. If the lenses could hold up against that, they could handle the hem of his cotton sweater.

  “What if …” he began, and let the words linger, searching for the words.

  He didn’t find them. “Hmm.”

  Endless sea in frozen time—what was that? And all this stuff about kingdoms and crowns?

  “Was there a monarchy on this world at one point?” I asked Heidi.

  “How should I know? I don’t even know what the thing does; I’m hardly going to be able to tell you about the history of a place I’ve never been.”

  She was irritable again. And fair enough. We’d been at this for too long, ransacking half the library, it felt like, trying to locate some other hint as to what we might face when we got there.

  I puzzled over those words again.

  Two must turn.

  Two must turn what?

  Carson must have shifted to that too, because he repeated my thought back at me: “What do two have to turn?”

  “Good question,” I said.

  Heidi pinched the bridge of her nose. Slapping her book onto the edge of a shelf so its spine jutted out, she marched into the central aisle where we could both see her. “Look, it’s fairly clear to me that we’re not getting anywhere with this. Can we just go and figure it out when we get there? Seekers are supposed to be good at thinking on their feet.”

  Carson sighed. “I don’t think we have any other choice but to jump without a parachute. Ready, fire, aim.” His stomach rumbled. “Or we could just keep heading toward starvation.” He caught a hard look from Heidi. “Metaphorical-ish starvation, possibly turned literal because you guys won’t take my money.”

  “Mira?” Heidi asked, ignoring him with great force of will. “We figure it out there. That okay with you?”

  I hesitated. I wanted to put her off, just a little bit longer; if not for long enough to crack the riddle before our backs were to the wall, then to at least learn a little more about this world, its geography. Even what the keys looked like. So far we had water, coast, two key temples plus, somewhere, the Tide of Ages. We could’ve had less to go on … but not much less.

  “Carson’s right,” I agreed, unwillingly. “I don’t think we have any other options. Not unless we tear this library apart in search of answers. And even then …”

  “Great. So today?” When I hesitated again, Heidi huffed. “Tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Tomorrow’s … great.”

  “Great,” she repeated, not sounding especially excited; just more of that typical Heidi coldness.

  And then, without saying a word more, she disappeared round the corner. Very shortly afterward, the slamming of a door echoed to us.

  I exchanged a tense look with Carson.

  “I guess that’s it then,” he said.

  “Apparently so.”

  “She might cheer up when we’re actually going for it. You know, doing something, instead of just … treading water, or whatever.”

  “Maybe,” I said. And I hoped so. But for some reason, a little part of me didn’t believe it.

  7

  London; Southwark. Tourist paradise, at least for Carson.

  On one side of us was the City Hall. On the other was Tower Bridge, stretching across the Thames, whose waters were, at present, fairly low—which made our timing quite perfect.

  The City Hall was a strange thing. Carson said it resembled an egg; I, on the other hand, thought it was much more like a giant glass woodlouse, a word which drew a blank look from Carson and that Heidi ended up explaining: “A pillbug,” she huffed.

  “Oh …” Then, “Eww.”

  He’d quizzed me about the building’s history. I reminded him that I had only lived in London since January, and thus hadn’t given the capital the greatest degree of attention—at least, not any part of it that didn’t tap into my research, and even then I was more concerned with the worlds on the other side than the city itself.

  Carson was baffled. “But you’re a Brit …”

  “Why would that mean I know the city like the back of my hand? One, the place is huge, and two, do you know the layout of New York City right down to the street?”

  “No …”

  “Exactly. I know the bits of London that I need to know, and those only through exploring since I’ve been here.”

  He pulled a face. “But … it’s London.”

  “Funnily enough, London might seem to be the center of the UK’s universe to you, but I can assure you that’s not the case here.”

  Heidi had been a little more in the know, and gave Carson a short, begrudging history. And we’d made a point of coming by during public visiting hours once so Carson could marvel at it from the inside.

  Now, though, it served no purpose to us beyond a showy piece of engineering to serve as our backdrop this May afternoon.

  “So you’re serious then,” Carson said as we meandered to the wall overlooking the Thames.

  “About what?” Heidi asked.

  “We’re going after this Tide of Ages thing without knowing what it actually is.”

  “That’s the long and short of it, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s money. And I don’t know about you two, but I’m pretty sick of sustaining myself on pasta and tomato soup.” Often together. Blech.

  “I’ve offered to—”

  Heidi silenced him with a swipe of the hand. “I don’t want your pity money. Besides,” she added, shooting him a sidelong look, “don’t you have better things to spend your dead parents’ money on than feeding a pair of scruffs?”

  Carson winced at that. I winced with him—we didn’t often speak of his family; hadn’t really since that night I brought back the Chalice Gloria. But I didn’t pull Heidi up on it. Though somewhat harsh, she hadn’t said it to be callous. It was perfectly reasonable. Carson’s inheritance was for better things than Heidi and I to chow down.

  “She’s right,” I said. “We do need the money. Especially after spending on these—” I patted my pocket, and the flask held therein, “—and that.” I hooked a thumb at the coil of elvish rope Carson held over his shoulder. Silvery and bright, it had drawn several looks on our way over here. “Besides, this is what we do—seek adventure, you know? If we’re living on your largesse, we’re not doing our bloody jobs, are we? No glory in idleness.”

  Though that was nothing compared to what I expected from the third and final objects I gestured to. Split between me and Heidi were a bundle of slim harnesses, a rappel anchor, and a heavy descender that probably weighed half as much as Heidi by itself. Presently tucked into a pair of canvas bags, in just a moment we’d need to break them out and kit ourselves up—and then we would certainly endure stares.

  I was banking on some terribly English reserve to go hand in hand with those. Otherwise cutting our gateway was going to be problematic.

  “Besides,” I said with a wry backward look at Carson, “Some of us are hoping to get our own robot butlers one day.”

  We stopped at the wall overlooking the Thames. The river had receded slightly, so small stretches of sand were visible at each bank. They were just long enough that we could walk a few feet in either direction. Not much, but that was fine; we had scoped this place out several times already, and my compass showed the world we needed to travel to could be reached via the wall connected to the bank currently below us.

  Unfortunately, we would be quite visible to anyone on the opposite side of the Thames. And eyes would certainly be on us. It was not every day that the citizens of London witnessed a gaggle of unlikely
teenagers rappel down from the walk to the exposed banks of the Thames.

  Heidi and I unpacked the rappel equipment.

  “Me first?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I agreed. She was already putting her harness on, and undertaking the laborious process of tightening every single strap as far as it would go.

  Carson peered over the wall. “Couldn’t we just jump that?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. This way is more fun though.”

  “We’ll need this stuff later, I’m pretty sure,” said Heidi. “Rope?”

  Carson handed it over. Heidi set to unravelling it, and affixed the descender when she had enough clear. She then attached this end to her harness via a loop.

  Apparently it wasn’t just me who thought the knot she formed didn’t exactly look the most secure, because Carson said nervously, “Are you sure that’s going to hold?”

  “Were this normal rope, I’d be watching my shin bone bursting out of my leg in upon landing, probably. But this stuff …” She tugged it, and the force of it suddenly being pulled taut cracked in the air. “Now go tie the other end to something.”

  Carson glanced around us, wide-eyed. “Like what?”

  “Not your head, for sure, as it’s far too empty to bear even my weight. There’s a streetlamp over there. Come on, go!”

  “Go on, Carson,” I encouraged gently. “The sooner you do it, the sooner this ordeal is over.”

  He obliged, trotting off unsteadily with the other end of the silvery rope. The streetlamps weren’t far off, so the rope stretching across to the wall and below wouldn’t eat up too much of the path. But it did eat some of it, and as Carson set to tying a much more precise knot than Heidi, a couple of young adults moving our way had to take a sudden detour as their path became obstructed by a sagging span of silver. They bypassed around it, stopping momentarily to give the three of us a particularly confused look before moving on.

  Carson stalked back. “There.” Then, more to himself than either of us, he mumbled, “Felt like an idiot doing that. Everyone looking …”

  Everyone was looking. Total failures at being innocuous—but then, of course, how often did we actually manage to slip under the radar? Carson and I had been pursued through the streets of London by cloaked men wielding knives—cinquedeas—multiple times. One of those times, I’d turned the umbrella dangling from my belt into its true form, Decidian’s Spear, and tried to fight them off in the park. We’d returned to London via a public toilet and ridden the Tube whilst utterly drenched. Not to mention that time when I disappeared on camera from a locked police interrogation room to evade my parents. (And how fortunate we were that they had yet to catch up with me about that.)

  So here we were, doing another bizarre thing in broad daylight. Let the people of London think we were a bunch of fools.

  Just, you know … don’t let them see us cutting the gateway.

  All ready to go, Heidi tugged on the rope one last time to check it was secure. It was, so she crossed to the wall, using the descender to let her go; then she clambered up, pivoted, and began to ease herself over the side.

  Out of one corner of gritted teeth, Carson said, cheeks flushed, “People are watching.”

  “Nothing I can do about that, amigo.” Except for wishing they would stop, I supposed—and I didn’t think that would get us anywhere. After all, if wishes were horses, I wouldn’t have had to keep taking the tube everywhere.

  More than a handful of passers-by had stopped now. They watched Heidi’s head disappear from view, rope making a ratcheting noise as she worked the descender. Some, close to the wall, peered over the side to track her progress. Others turned eyes to us.

  “Whatchu lot doin’?” someone called—a man with a particularly thick Cockney accent.

  “We’re just—” Carson began before I elbowed him.

  “Ignore them!”

  His face creased with anxiety. Then he gave his best, most nervous grin to the fellow, mumbled, “Scientific research,” and turned back to join me in attempting to stare a hole through the wall.

  Someone else muttered, “Your friend is down.”

  At the same time, Heidi called, “I’m at the bank!”

  I peered down at her. She was untying the elvish rope from the metal loop in her harness.

  “Right, you’re up,” I told Carson, fishing in my bag and pulling out the first harness I touched. “Get this on, quick.”

  “Rope is loose!” Heidi called.

  I pulled it up and over. Slightly unnecessary, given what it could do … but enough eyes were on us as it was. Best to leave the tricks to the last possible moment, when I hoped our audience would have grown bored.

  The descender clanged over the top just as Carson was grumbling, “Why couldn’t we do this at night? Why now, when everyone knows what’s happening?”

  “Because this world’s clock is in sync with ours,” I said, and set to tying a knot of rope for Carson in his loop. “If we go through at night, we enter at night.”

  “So?”

  “The world is wet. I’d quite like to be able to see when I’m out there. Now would you just move your hands and let me do this?”

  “You’re not making it tight enough!”

  “Fine. You do it.”

  Carson’s knot was much tighter than mine. I wondered if he’d been in the Scouts—that was what they were called over there, right?—or whether it was just his eternal paranoia guiding him to tie the thing ridiculously tight.

  “Did you say that we can’t cut back through again once we’ve passed through the gateway?” Carson asked.

  “Uh huh. It’s more or less a straight run, all in the same place. No easy exit to London save for at the end.”

  He nodded back. I wondered if this was because he was edging ever closer to asking if he might use his pilfered ring to cut us through. But if it was, he didn’t say; instead, he gave a shaky sigh, muttered, “Here goes nothing,” and mounted the wall. His turn was awkward and unsteady, and I feared for a moment that he would go over the side.

  “Don’t you dare fall on me!” Heidi shouted up at him.

  The temptation on his face was glorious. But he resisted. Instead he settled so his bottom half was over the wall, propping himself on it with one hand … then he released, and gently squeezed the descender.

  “See you down there!” he called before disappearing.

  I was still being watched, though now the audience was of a transitory sort: the stationary watchers had wrenched themselves into motion and moved off, and now I received only glances from men and women and children passing. Only one problem couple remained, by the wall, where they now tracked Carson’s descent.

  Fortunately—or not—Carson’s words before his descent lingered, keeping me from thinking too much about my surroundings. We weren’t jumping so much this time—or even at all. We’d go in, and the next time we’d go out would be once we acquired and returned with the Tide of Ages.

  For some reason, that thought rankled. Why? I wasn’t sure. Convenience should win out, make me happy. Instead, I itched.

  When Carson had reached the bottom—much less quickly than Heidi—and called that he’d untied the rope, I pulled it and the descender back up. Then I shrugged into my harness, adjusted the straps, tied a knot of my own—and, with what would be my last look at London for a while, clambered over the wall and began to descend.

  Carson and Heidi were bickering as I made my way down.

  “You’re kicking sand on me.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Well, I don’t care what you meant—you did it anyway.”

  I wasn’t sure how much of that I could take either.

  At the bottom, I planted my feet firmly—or not.

  “Ugh.”

  “I know,” Heidi said.

  The makeshift bank was short, just a few feet in each direction. And although the Thames had receded enough for this small island to remain, it hadn’t been adequate to dry out th
is small expanse. So the mass of pebbles and silt had a sloshy sort of give to it.

  Carson, I saw, had sunk a couple of inches. He kept lifting his feet and stepping clear to find a better position. No dice: his loafers disappeared, coming back up with an ever thickening line of dirt around them. He tried to shuffle them free and ended up kicking more dirt on Heidi, who eyed him with a kind of vengeful look that I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of.

  “Can we hurry through? Please?” he asked, cheerfully oblivious to the ire being directed his way by the tiny Asian girl next to him.

  “Hang on.”

  I untied the harness, and gave a gentle tug of the rope. I hoped its unfurling would appear quite natural …

  The tension on it evaporated after a moment. Then it was snaking down the wall, not quite at free-fall pace.

  I caught it, already beginning to coil it back up.

  “No way,” Carson breathed. “It is like The Lord of the Rings.”

  “Heidi,” I said, “there’s no one looking. Quick, cut us through.”

  She didn’t need telling twice. She slipped her bracelet down so that she could grip the talisman on it between thumb and forefinger. Swiping through the air, she cut a perfect white line on the wall. It glowed like a sun, and then opened to reveal a cascade of colors all dancing.

  She dodged through after one last look at the wall above us.

  “Quick,” I told Carson, “in.”

  He obeyed, manbag vanishing last. Then I plunged through, enveloped in the lightshow. I held my breath, just in case the compass wasn’t perfectly accurate and we did exit in water—

  But we didn’t. Instead we landed on a shore—and at the beginning of our next adventure.

  8

  “Wow,” Carson breathed.

  Heidi, too, was similarly caught off-guard.

  The world we’d come out in was vibrant. Close to the height of summer, I guessed, because the sun was blazing on our skin. Wisps of cloud painted the sky, but they were perilously thin—more like a painter’s errors than intended strokes. The blue was perfect, so deep it looked like it had come from a holiday brochure with all the levels jacked up.