Into the Gauntlet

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Unbidden, another memory came back to him, one that had been haunting him for weeks. One from the peak of Mount Everest. Ian had been falling, plunging toward certain death. Even though he'd paid an entire pack of Sherpas to get him safely up and down the mountain, Amy was the only one close enough to reach him. But she'd faced a choice: save the test tube of valuable Janus serum they'd all been searching for or save Ian.

  Ian had known, in the split second he'd had to think, that the logical, rational, likely thing for Amy to do was to choose the serum. It's what Ian would have done in her place. The serum was priceless, possibly even irreplaceable. And Ian was just someone who'd said fake nice things to her and then betrayed her, more than once.

  But Amy had saved Ian and let the serum fall.

  Ian still couldn't understand why she'd done that. It was so ... un-Lucian. Un-Cahill.

  Everyone had been so bundled up then, with every inch of skin covered against the brutal Everest cold. So Ian couldn't see the expression on Amy's face at that moment; he couldn't gauge what she was thinking. But he'd looked into her eyes. And her eyes had been ... knowing.

  She knew then that my mother caused her parents' death. And she still saved me.

  This made everything even more incomprehensible.

  Ian picked up the Hope Cahill/Arthur Trent file

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  again. Maybe he'd missed something. Maybe his mother had tried to make up for Amy and Dan's parents dying.

  The file held both documents leading up to the fire and a flurry of letters sent afterward. It wasn't hard for Ian to piece everything together. As soon as the flames grew out of control, the non-Lucians panicked. None of them seemed to have understood that Isabel wanted Hope and Arthur to die. Alistair Oh, Cora Wizard, and Mary-Todd Holt had all, eventually, called 911. Eisenhower Holt had grabbed a neighbor's garden hose and aimed it at the blaze.

  And Vikram and Isabel Kabra had masterminded a cover-up, trying to hide all evidence of their involvement.

  "They felt guilty," Ian whispered to himself. "Otherwise, why would they sound so defensive?"

  It was cold comfort, grasping at straws to convince himself his parents weren't really that bad.

  Ian turned over the second-to-last piece of paper in the file and was surprised to find that the last sheet had nothing to do with the deaths of Hope Cahill and Arthur Trent. Rather, it was a report his mother had written about the death of Irina Spasky.

  "She completely betrayed us," his mother wrote. "She disobeyed a direct order from me and went to rescue Alistair Oh and Amy and Dan Cahill when I told her they had to be eliminated...."

  Eliminated. Just a few weeks ago, his mother had

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  tried, in cold blood, to murder Alistair and Amy and Dan. Not by mistake, not as collateral damage, but intentionally. Ian scanned the entire document. The murder attempt wasn't even a bargaining chip, something threatened in exchange for her actual goal. It was carefully planned --a goal in and of itself.

  And Irina had died in the others' place.

  "When I saw what Irina was doing, I could have gone back and rescued her," Isabel had written. "But why bother?"

  So cold. A woman's life dismissed in three words.

  It wasn't that Ian had had any great sentimental attachment to Irina Spasky. She'd threatened to use her poison fingernails a few too many times to be close or cuddly with anyone. But there'd been a moment years ago when Ian was little, when she'd said to him quite wistfully, "Do you suppose you could call me Auntie Irina? You're the same age now as another little boy I once knew...."

  She'd covered her mouth immediately with her hands, as if she hadn't actually meant to say that. And Ian had certainly never called her Auntie. With his parents' encouragement, he had treated her like a servant, slightly beneath his notice. But she had served his family faithfully for years. Even Irina Spasky didn't deserve to be left to her death with the words Why bother?

  Furrowing his brow, Ian flipped back and forth between the papers describing the three deaths.

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  Something was different. The faint hint of remorse that came across in the earlier papers was completely missing in connection to Irina Spasky. It was like his mother wasn't even capable of remorse anymore--not remorse or guilt or doubt or loyalty to anyone but herself. Why not? Ian wondered.

  Something rattled across the room, and Ian froze. Quickly, he extinguished the small reading light he'd been using. In the sudden darkness he felt blind. He didn't know if he should leap up and hide or if it was wiser not to move, to stay as silent as possible.

  It's just a noise outside in the Kabra family zoo, Ian told himself. Probably that blasted monkey Mum insisted on using today.

  The rattle sounded again, and Ian could no longer pretend that it wasn't the doorknob to the secret wing. Before he had a chance to move, the door swung open and the beam of a flashlight caught him right in the face.

  Someone gasped. It was a gasp Ian recognized.

  "Natalie?" Ian said.

  "Ian?" his sister whispered. She dropped the flashlight, and the beam of light swung crazily around the room.

  Ian scooped up the flashlight and pointed it directly toward the ground, confining the light to a narrow space.

  "No --no --don't let it show through the windows," he said frantically. Now Natalie gulped.

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  "What are you doing here, Ian?" she asked in a small voice.

  Ian thought fast.

  "Mum and Dad wanted me to pick up some files for them," he said. "They trust me in here. Because I'm older than you."

  "You're lying," Natalie said, almost offhandedly. "If Mum and Dad knew you were in here, why would you be so worried about the light showing?"

  Ian had forgotten that Natalie had gone through all the same logic and analysis training classes that he had. He waited for her to say, "I'm telling," so he could say, "I'm telling first." And then he could figure out how to negotiate her silence.

  But Natalie said nothing. She just sniffed.

  It was funny--just that one sniff made Ian determined that Natalie would never have to find out what he'd just learned about their parents. He never wanted her reading about how Irina Spasky had died.

  "Go back to bed," Ian said. "There's nothing to look at here."

  "There are secrets here," Natalie said stubbornly. "Explanations."

  She looked up at her big brother.

  "You don't trust them, either, do you?" she said. "That's why we're both here."

  Ian sighed. Sometimes Natalie was too smart for her own good.

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  "Don't worry about it," he said. "Just think about the next Prada bag Mum will buy you."

  "No," Natalie said. "I have to know--what's happened to her? Why is she being so mean? Mean all the time, even to us?"

  Ian shrugged helplessly. Keeping the beam of the flashlight low, he backed up slightly so Natalie wouldn't see the mess of files on the floor. He accidentally backed into a desk, knocking himself off-kilter. He reached around and grabbed at the edge of the desk, but his fingers brushed something else. A ... test tube?

  Ian spun around and held it in the light.

  [Proofreader's note: The words on the test tube are: Sa othu gearch sith, os I gearch ethe. Sue yht slslki het urtht ot efre.]

  It was a test tube Ian had seen before, with oddly spelled words on it. Ian knew that the words themselves didn't actually matter anymore. They were anagrams of instructions that Amy Cahill had followed weeks ago in Paris. She had risked her life to follow those instructions right before Ian had swooped in and stolen the test tube out of her hands.

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  "So this is where Mum and Dad have been keeping the Lucian serum," Natalie said, peering over his shoulder. "Wouldn't you think they'd put it somewhere safer?"

  Ian shook the test tube, which was supposed to hold some of the most valuable liquid on the face of the earth. Maybe the most valuable liquid, period, since the Janus serum had been lost,
and nobody knew what had happened to the Tomas serum, the Ekat serum, or the original master serum created by Gideon Cahill himself more than five hundred years ago. Ian was pretty sure the master serum was going to be the final prize in the Clue hunt; he could remember back in Paris, when he'd been so proud to have at least captured the Lucian serum.

  He'd been so ignorant then.

  "It doesn't matter what happens to the test tube," he told his sister. He turned it upside down. "See? It's empty."

  Natalie looked up at him with troubled eyes.

  "Then they drank it," she whispered. "Just Mum, do you think? Or Mum and Dad both?"

  "Who cares?" Ian asked harshly. "Either way, no one saved any to share with us."

  "That's not fair," Natalie said, a familiar whininess back in her voice. But this time it was whininess on Ian's behalf. "You're the one who found the serum. They should at least have shared it with you."

  "We're just servants to them," Ian said. "Minions. Like" -- he swallowed hard -- "like Irina."

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  CHAPTER 5

  Dan felt cheated.

  Nellie and Amy had convinced him that he had to come to Romeo and Juliet because it would be a good place to look for a Clue.

  "It's about feuding families," Nellie had said. "Don't you think that's related?"

  Besides, the two had told him, the play would be exciting.

  "Back in Shakespeare's day, theater wasn't seen as high class and literary and all that," Amy had said, practically reading the words right from the computer screen. "It was meant to appeal to common people. On the same level as the other big entertainment in Elizabethan London--bear baiting."

  "What's bear baiting?" Dan had asked.

  Amy had put her hands over Saladin's ears before answering.

  "Oh, it was awful," she said. "They'd chain up a bear and then let a bunch of other animals -- usually

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  dogs -- attack. Everybody would watch to see if the bear killed the dogs or the dogs killed the bear."

  "Sounds like Survivor," Nellie said. Her face turned grim. "Or this clue hunt."

  "Well, anyhow," Amy said quickly. "There are sword fights in Romeo and Juliet. Two or three of them. You'll love those."

  So now Dan had been sitting in the Globe Theatre for what felt like hours, and he was bored out of his mind. Sure, there'd been a sword fight. One. But Dan had missed most of it because he was leaning over to Amy and asking, "Wait--what are they fighting about? Just because the one guy bit his thumb at the other guy? What's wrong with that?"

  "It was a terrible insult in Shakespeare's time," Amy had explained.

  "Well, then --can I bite my thumb at Isabel Kabra the next time I see her?"

  Just then the sword fight had ended. And ever since, the play had mostly been people saying sappy things about love.

  Now the girl, Juliet, was standing on a balcony that jutted out above the stage.

  "O Romeo, Romeo," she sighed. "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"

  Dan dug his elbow into Amy's side.

  "What's her problem --is she blind?" Dan asked. "Can't she see that Romeo dude on the stage right below her?"

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  "It's supposed to be nighttime," Amy whispered. "It's dark, and he's hiding."

  "He's not hiding very well," Dan said.

  "Anyhow, 'wherefore' means 'why,' not 'where,'" Amy said.

  That was crazy. "Wherefore" sure sounded like it was supposed to mean "where." Dan's opinion of Shakespeare was sinking lower and lower.

  "But--" Dan began.

  "Shh," Amy hissed. "I want to hear this."

  She settled back, a dreamy look on her face. Beside her, Nellie looked every bit as rapt.

  Dan glanced around. It seemed like every single other person in the theater was staring up at Juliet with that same goofy expression that Amy and Nellie had. Even the people standing in the middle of the theater where there wasn't a roof, where the rain was pouring right down on their heads.

  Amy had said that those people were called groundlings, and they didn't have a roof over their heads because this theater was supposed to be historically accurate, as much like theaters back in Shakespeare's time as possible.

  Dan thought that if he'd been standing in the rain watching a stupid play about love, he wouldn't have minded a little historical inaccuracy to keep his head dry.

  Dan's attention wandered further. He looked toward the top of the theater, three stories up. He and Amy

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  and Nellie had seats off to the side, near the stage, so he had a good view of the ring of thatched roof that protected everyone who wasn't a groundling. Amy had told him it was the only thatched roof in London -- and it was allowed only because they'd used special flame-retardant thatch.

  The original Globe Theatre had burned to the ground.

  Another fire, Dan thought. Probably set by feuding Cahills even way back in the 1600s.

  Dan's stomach churned. This had been happening to him ever since Jamaica, ever since he'd watched an innocent man die. Dan had gone into shock right afterward, but since then he'd worked very hard to convince Nellie and Amy he was back to normal.

  I am, Dan told himself.

  Except when he thought about Lester too much, or when he remembered how dangerous the Clue hunt was. Then his stomach churned and his vision blurred and his mind blanked and he wasn't sure if he was going to throw up or faint or just start screaming and screaming and screaming....

  Dan forced himself to focus very intently on the thatch. Maybe there was a Clue hidden up there and he would see it while Nellie and Amy were watching the play.

  A hand appeared in the section of thatch Dan was staring at.

  Dan jerked back and blinked hard.

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  Was he hallucinating? Imagining Lester reaching up out of the quicksand all over again?

  Dan made himself look again. He wasn't hallucinating. There was a hand holding on to the thatch. While Dan watched, a dark figure appeared behind the hand: Somebody was holding on and peering over the peak of the roof section directly opposite the stage.

  Two more dark-clad heads appeared beside the first.

  Dan tugged on Amy's arm. He reminded himself not to act like he'd just thought he was hallucinating a dead man's hand.

  "You didn't tell me there were going to be ninjas!" he said excitedly.

  "What are you talking about? There aren't ninjas in Romeo and Juliet!" Amy said.

  "Sure there are," Dan said. "Look!" He pointed toward the back section of roof. "How soon until they rappel down onto the stage?"

  Amy looked up at the roof, too.

  "Oh, no," she moaned.

  In the brief moment that Dan had looked away, the three ninja figures had begun pulling other clothes over their dark costumes. They were the same kind of clothes the people on the stage were wearing: old-fashioned dresses for two of them, and breeches and a tunic for the third. Then the ninjas began following

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  the peak of the thatch around, toward the roof section that hung over the stage.

  "What are they looking for?" Amy muttered, because every few steps they plunged some sort of testing stick down into the thatch.

  The ninjas in Elizabethan clothing passed on to a section of roof that Amy and Dan couldn't see because it was practically right overhead. Amy surprised Dan by diving over the people sitting in front of them.

  "Excuse me, excuse me, sorry to get in your way," she said on her way down, as people gasped and grumbled. Only Amy would apologize in the middle of a dive. At the bottom, Amy did something like a flip and landed on her feet in the groundling section.

  "They're pushing something down the drainpipe!" she hissed back to Dan.

  Dan glanced at Nellie --still, amazingly, staring raptly at Romeo and Juliet onstage. Then he imitated Amy's dive and flipped into the groundlings.

  "What drainpipe?" he asked Amy.

  She pointed.

  A tube ran down along the side of t
he stage from the roof, painted to blend in with all the frilly stage decorations. Dan thought about telling Amy that it wouldn't really work as a drainpipe because it'd been capped at the top. But the pseudo-ninjas had taken the cap off and were putting some sort of chain down the tube.

  "That's a plumber's snake," Dan told Amy. "One of those things you use to clear out clogged--"

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  A rolled-up paper popped out of the bottom of the tube.

  Amy dived for it.

  "That's ours!" the breeches-clad ninja yelled down at her.

  "Too bad!" Dan yelled back. "It's ours now!"

  The people around him turned and glared and made shushing noises, but Dan didn't care. He was sure the paper was another lead. That was all he could think about. He didn't even care which team the ninjas were from. They were still three stories up, on the roof. Dan and Amy had all the time in the world to escape.

  Then the breeches-clad ninja pulled out a rope. He staked one end of it in the roof and shinnied down it, straight toward Amy and Dan.

  Dan glanced around frantically. Back at their seats, Nellie had stopped watching the play and was watching them. She was white-faced and worried looking, gesturing wildly.

  "Go! Run!" she screamed, pointing toward the exit. "I'll meet you outside!"

  But the groundlings around Amy and Dan surged toward the ninja on the rope, angrily muttering things like, "That's not supposed to happen in the balcony scene!" Dan was caught between a man's large belly on one side and a woman's dripping raincoat on the other. He couldn't even see Nellie anymore.

  Amy grabbed his arm and pulled.

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  "This way!" she screamed.

  There was only one way to escape: up.

  Onto the stage.

  * * *

  Jonah had a bad seat at the Globe.