“Holy stars, Tarik! Are you all right?”
“My father’s the one—”
“I know. I talked to your mother. But are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I pulled out of his grip. “Just…stay away from me for a while.”
“Why?”
His face shaded red, the way it always did when he was angry. I studied him a moment, then just shook my head and held up a finger, keeping him away.
“I don’t have to explain to you,” I said.
“Tarik, I’m your best friend. Don’t cut me out right now.”
Zagger stood up, but I turned a warning glare on him and he stayed put. I was so sick of people trying to solve my problems for me. So sick of it.
“Tarik…” Samyr said. “Please. Don’t be like this.”
I glanced at each of them and backed a step away. “What do you all want from me? What do you expect me to do?”
And none of them answered. I turned and walked away, and left them staring after me. I would deal with them later. But right now, I had only one person I needed to take care of, and he was smoking down the hall straight toward me. At least I wouldn’t have to try to track him down.
“Kor,” I said.
He stopped in front of me, hat in his hands. “Sorry about your father, Tarik. Is he—”
“He’ll be all right.”
“From the look in your eyes, I’m wagering the man who did it won’t be able to say the same.”
“Look,” I said, eyeing him sidelong. “I need your help.”
He arched a brow, feigning surprise. “Really?”
“Don’t,” I snapped.
“So the deal is back on?”
“Yes.”
He smirked at me in the lamplight. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
I waited until he’d passed me, then I headed on down the hall to the garden terrace.
I let myself out into the cold afternoon and leaned against the stone balustrade, ignoring the wet that seeped through my shirt sleeves, ignoring the cold that bit through me like anger. Everything moped in a dismal grey wash, dreary without the shine of new snow. I always marveled how the world could go from dazzling to hideous in just a few hours, as if the heat pulled a mask from a horribly scarred face.
From this vantage point I could just glimpse the plaza below where the public gala would be held. The way the events had originally been planned, we were all supposed to make an appearance at the plaza, then retire to the palace for the party after the party with just my family and the families of the Court. Griff and I had always tried to sneak out of that part of the event in years past, with varying degrees of success and resulting in varying degrees of trouble, almost invariably of my own making.
People who didn’t know us usually took Griff to be the trouble-maker. But for all he played at being reckless, he really was too driven for that. He’d always taken the fall for me, though. I wondered now why I’d ever let him.
I hated that I’d let him.
I hated that I was coward enough to let him.
Chapter 12 — Hayli
I’m not quite sure how Pika and I got back home. Seems like one second we went under in a stampede of panic, then next we were sitting together on my cot, Pika with her arms like a manacle around my waist. I think the other kids kept gawping at us, but I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts to line up and behave. I just stared and kept staring at the floor, seeing straight through it to Tarik with his hand outstretched and the revolver firing off and everyone screaming as if he’d shot at them.
Pika shuddered. I petted the wispy coils of her red curls, like that could make it all better. Like aught could.
A shadow fell over us. That finally got me shook out of my thoughts enough to glance up, because I hoped to see Derrin standing there. Instead it was Jig. He wore a little frown on his pretty mouth, his arms crossed tight over his chest.
“You a’right? What’s got you in such a rut, Li?” he asked, kicking at the leg of my cot. “You been sitting there for half an hour, like.”
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s your blithering fault, yeah?”
His arms flailed out, punctuating the question on his face. When I didn’t respond to that, he cried, “Wha’ve I got to do with it? You and me, we haven’t seen each other all day.”
“If…” I started, but then I remembered how Jig had taken a fall for me, and my voice died, my throat fuzzy with tears. I couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t done aught to deserve it. For once. “I didn’t mean it,” I whispered. “I just…I wish I hadn’t seen it.”
“Seen what?”
I hugged Pika and stared off across the room, letting out my breath when I saw Derrin coming our way. He had something like fear or worry in his eyes, and it made me feel strangely unsteady.
“Nothing I want to talk about,” I told Jig.
He crossed his arms. “You ganna tell Derrin?”
“Tell him what, Jig? What’s to tell?”
“Wha’ever you won’t tell me,” he said, shrugging.
He wouldn’t take his eyes off my face, not until Derrin came up beside him and said, “Jig, scram.”
Jig tossed his head, but a minute and he backed down, and slunk away to his own cot.
“Something wrong, Hayli?” Derrin asked.
I hesitated. More than anything I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t want Pika hearing it all over again. Poor kid had got enough of it already.
I put my hands on her shoulders and whispered, “Pika, I’ve got to talk to Derrin.”
Some little muffled sound escaped her, fuddled by her face buried in my lap. I glanced at Derrin, asking help. He crouched down and laid a strong hand on her back.
“Hey kid,” he murmured. “Want to go talk to Miss Nan in the kitchens? She might need some help.”
“No,” Pika said, vicious, turning her head to glare at Derrin. “I’m staying with Hayli.”
“Can’t, silly,” I said. “It’s super secret stuff, right? But you can stay here on my cot if you like.”
She twitched with a shudder, but nodded and released me. I followed Derrin up to the smelly chicken-wire park and pulled myself onto the wall.
“Now, what’s bothering, Hayli? You girls looked scared out of your wits,” Derrin said.
“Someone tried to kill him, right in front of everyone!”
He spun about, staring at me. “Kill who?”
“King Trabin. Pika wanted to see the motorcade so we went…we saw the whole thing.”
Derrin studied me, hard, alarmed or angry I couldn’t tell. A minute and he linked his thumbs into his grey waistcoat pockets. “Is the King alive?”
“Don’t know,” I said, and my voice got caught up in my throat. “That’s not the worst of it, though. The shooter? He was a mage.”
“What?”
I flinched and nodded. “I’m not a liar. I saw him. And the prince tried to shoot him.”
Derrin gave a low whistle. “You know, that’s more a surprise than that someone would try to shoot the King.”
I shifted on the wall, frowning down at Derrin. Somehow he had me feeling prickly, and I didn’t really know why.
“What d’you mean?” I asked.
He made a little noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “The rogue prince? Since when did he care about anything but himself and his face plastered on the front page of every paper?”
“I don’t…” I started, but caught myself.
I shouldn’t have an opinion about Tarik, much as Derrin knew. I’d heard the rumors too, of course. We all had. Tarik was a wildcard, a madcap. The Herald showed us the Prince who dazzled high society, but the rumors chattered about all his mischief and defiance, as if he were two whole different people. But I couldn’t shut out that image of his quiet face, that sad, still look in his eyes. And that seemed like someone else entirely. It made my insides cold, now that I finally let myself remember it.
“I guess I’d heard some such about him a
nd his pop…I mean, the King.”
“Well, you don’t think he gets in the spits for fun, do you?”
I scowled and chewed the inside of my lip. “I don’t think he’s like that.”
That got Derrin arching a brow at me, half-amused, half-skeptical. But he just shrugged and knocked the heel of his boot against the ground.
“Who’d want to do it, Derrin? Who’d want to kill the King?”
“Plenty of folks talk about it,” he said, cool as pie. “Once you step away from all the glitz and glamour up north-side, anyway. Hell, the king’s not responsible for all the laws but he sure doesn’t go out of his way to change the bad ones. Used to be the King who spoke for the poor in the Assembly. Guess Trabin forgot that somewhere along the way.”
“I thought those new laws were supposed to make it so we dan’ exist anymore,” I said, trying to recall the back-and-forth articles the Herald had printed some months ago.
“Yeah,” Derrin said, with a harsh laugh. “Maybe by starving us all out and replacing us with steam automatons. Problem solved.”
“Automatons?”
“Ah, it’s just rumor, really. Coins says there’s talk of making metal workers who don’t get tired and don’t need to get paid or fed. I think it’s a lot of fancy.”
“Metal people,” I scoffed.
“They’ve already made metal horses,” he said, and that silenced me, because I’d thought of the motorcars as metal horses too. A minute and Derrin tossed his head back and said, “Be interesting to see what happens tonight.”
“You ever been to a gala?” I asked.
“Once. Why? D’you want to go tonight?”
My mouth dropped open. “Yes!” I cried. “I mean, this morning was so awful, but…” I fiddled with the edge of my waistcoat. “I do want to see what happens.”
The corner of his mouth tugged into something like a smile. “Well? Maybe we should pay a visit.”
“But Derrin! It’s a royal gala. We’re…”
“It’s a public event. They don’t keep you out of the Medemy Fair, do they?”
I grinned. “Not yet.”
So a little over half an hour later we stood in the huge plaza, hemmed in by an oddly quiet crowd. The whole place gleamed and glittered, pocked with fires and street lamps and banners waving in the cold wind, and snowflakes shining like falling stars in all the brightness. The only people making any noise were the musicians making a ruckus up around the dais, and the mummers and acrobats and freaks clustered around the purple-striped tents—mostly mages who couldn’t make it any other way but to let people gawp at their gifts.
I couldn’t see Tarik anywhere. Some official-looking blokes wandered around the stage, and guards roamed all through the plaza. We’d had to squirrel through a maze of suspicion just to get in, and even then just barely. Folks who looked twice at us now edged clear of us—I was used to that—but the guards who looked twice kept looking. I wasn’t used to that.
All those eyes wouldn’t do any good, though, if the Ghost came back. If he wanted Tarik’s life, he’d just take it. And not one of those guards would be able to do a thing about it.
I shivered and hung close by Derrin, terrified of a Ghost appearing beside me, terrified of the tide of bodies sweeping me away.
“Maybe the Prince won’t even show,” Derrin said after a bit. “Selfish bastard. Doesn’t know what it means to rule, does he?”
“He’s just a kid…” I started.
“A kid!” Derrin laughed. “He’s a man now. Time for him to grow up and act like it.”
I frowned and crossed my arms, shivering in the snow. For a while we stood side by side, watching the people churning about us. I’d never seen so many fine coats on so many fine dandies in my life. The girls were all done up in their best, too, with their furs and garish hats and lips painted cherry red, probably hoping they’d get noticed by the Prince. I’d always laughed at those girls before, but not now. I secretly hoped the same.
At least the girls got the dandies’ attention. I listened to a group of gangly lads making comments, whistling at some doll or other and trying (and failing) to act suave, while the girls just laughed and shot them coy looks. My stomach squirmed, my fingers fidgeting on the ratty edges of my sleeves. My own rags had always been a shield—besides being heaps more comfortable than velvet dresses and beaded heels—but suddenly…suddenly I wondered what it would feel like to be admired.
It didn’t matter anyway. Nobody looked twice at street rats. Even lovely Gem knew that, for all her prancing and parading.
A lone trumpeter sounded a fanfare and I forgot my self-pity, and the girls forgot the flirting lads, because Prince Tarik suddenly appeared, moving up to the podium. They’d got a microphone all set up for him—a huge shiny contraption of a thing so that everyone in the plaza could hear him. The things were spanking new. I’d only seen one used once, at the Fair last spring when the King had opened the festival.
Tarik moved toward it, all calm and proud. He wasn’t like Jig though. Jig was arrogant, and wanted to be admired, but Tarik was just there in some way that made you admire him whether you much wanted to or not. No wonder half the city was in love with him. I think even the folks who disapproved of his mischief secretly adored him.
But tonight he wasn’t smiling, not like in his pictures. He wore his face like a mask. I don’t know quite what I thought I’d see—fear, fury, sadness—but I didn’t see aught at all. Just a boy, slim in his dark coat, staring at the crowd. His head was bare, not just without a crown (which he never wore) but without even a hat. I couldn’t imagine how he didn’t freeze.
He stepped up to the microphone, and just like that the crowd burst out in a birthday madrigal. Derrin had told me it would happen, because that’s what they did every year. You’d never know it the way Tarik took it. He just stood there, wide-eyed, as the chaos of voices chased through the song, until the last patters of applause faded away.
He ducked his head with something like a bashful smile, then glanced over his shoulder. Zagger stood behind him, staring straight ahead, but somehow I thought Tarik seemed a bit steadier when he turned around. It kind of surprised me that he’d be the one Tarik would look at.
“Thank you,” Tarik said, that low, smooth voice circling the plaza and quieting everyone at once. “Thank you.” A little rough edge snagged his words. “I’m grateful for this…for all that you’ve done.”
I couldn’t tell if he was fitsy, but I kept willing him not to be. He looked so lost up there, standing all alone with the snow in his hair.
He cleared his throat and said, “Most of you already know that my father was shot this morning.”
A murmur in the crowd suggested that some folks still didn’t.
“But he is alive, and his physician tells me he will recover.” His gaze flinched aside, and I found I was holding my breath. “I also know that this morning I…I may have frightened some of you. I saw the man who had shot my father, and…I didn’t think before I acted.” He gave us a bitter smile and added, “Some of you will likely say that’s just keeping in character for me, I’m sure. But I am sorry for that, and hope you will forgive me.”
Derrin stared, stunned. I suppose he never thought he’d hear the prince apologize to anyone, let alone everyone.
“My family will be departing for Lamanstal early this year. And I will be leaving as well.” He hesitated, then he bent toward the microphone, eyes blazing, and added, “But I assure all of you that the person responsible for this will be brought to justice. I promise you.”
Zagger shifted his weight. He must have made a noise or something, because Tarik straightened up with a sad little smile.
“Thank you again,” he said. “Please, enjoy the gala.”
And without even waiting for any applause, he spun away and disappeared. A few moments of quiet lingered, while folks thought over what he’d said, and how quick he’d shot off at the end, but then no one seemed to think much more about it after that
. The music started again. The jugglers with their flaming batons went on juggling, and a fire-eater roared a red inferno over the heads of an unsuspecting crowd. And laughter and shouts and fireworks and every kind of noise swelled up to fill the void Tarik had left behind.
“Want some food, Hayli?” Derrin asked.
I scowled, irked that he’d be as quick to forget Tarik as everyone else, when he should have been philosophizing about the speech with me.
“I want to wander a bit,” I said. “See you back?”
His eyes glinted at me, catching the light of a flaming wand. “Be careful.” He paused before turning away. “I thought I saw Jig and Anuk here a minute ago. Catch them up if you like.”
I gave him a look and wandered off into the throng. Anuk was a hellion and I liked him, but I couldn’t see Jig without feeling guilty—and annoyed too, on top of it all. When I spotted them through a sea of revelers, I turned and ducked into the crowd. No one shouted my name, no one grabbed me from behind. I got clear and sat on a low wall edging the plaza, watching the party-goers enjoy the festivities. Light and laughter sparkled all around me, like they were one and the same, and sparks fluttered in the dark through a white gleam of snow.
I couldn’t imagine a scene more splendid. It was wild and brilliant and overflowing with joy, making me forget for once the cold and the gnaw of hunger in my belly.
Still, some nagging thought kept beating at my mind, or at my heart, tugging me away from the happiness of the gala. I couldn’t figure out what it was—just a vague unhappiness chasing my thoughts wherever they went.
And then I remembered. Tarik was leaving.
I laughed out loud at myself, because I’d picked a dafty thing to get sore over. As if I’d ever have seen him again anyway. As if he even remembered me. As if anything.
Chapter 13 — Tarik
I passed an hour that felt like a lifetime in the palace ballroom, amid a swirl of doting courtiers and flatterers. Even with the terrace doors thrown open to the chilly night, the mass of bodies in the room made me dizzyingly hot. I was drowning in a sea of pale gauze and diamonds, stiff dress tails and starched sleeves, footmen and servers and musicians and a hundred other people whose faces I could never recall, let alone their names.
The Madness Project (The Madness Method) Page 10