The Maelstrom Page 11

  “I know that you’ve been at it, you little thief,” David chided, mussing her hair. “Breaking into my chest, trying on charms of every rank and putting on fashion shows for my mother. For shame, Mina.”

  “A thief wouldn’t put them back,” retorted the girl, polishing her newly won stone and peering up at him affectionately. “Be safe, wise David and fierce Max. I will miss you.” Hugging them both farewell, the girl hurried off to her bedroom, stopping only to close Rolf’s eyes and place the coppers back atop the lids.

  “What a strange child,” muttered the Director when the door had closed. “I don’t know whether she’s our savior or … something else.” She turned to Max. “You still have the Ormenheid?”

  “Not on me,” replied Max. “But she’s in my room.”

  “How fast do you think that ship can sail to Blys?” asked Ms. Richter. “We have only five weeks until Lord Naberius will expect an answer.”

  “When David was aboard, I think she averaged sixteen knots,” he said, doing the math in his head. “Two weeks. Maybe a little longer.”

  David shook his head. “Don’t fret, Ms. Richter,” he said, stuffing the portfolio into his enchanted pack. “Unless something goes very wrong, we’ll be in Blys by dawn.”

  Pleasantly ignoring the Director’s shock and subsequent questions, David bade her farewell and whisked Max from the room. A minute later, the boys were cutting swiftly across Bacon Library.

  “And how are we going to be in Blys by dawn?” Max hissed.

  But David did not reply as they wove through tables and study carrels packed with students poring over manuscripts or staring into space and mouthing the words to various incantations. There were midterms this week. Exams seemed an absurd notion with Rowan tottering at the edge of war, but Max knew that Old College would have to be nearly overrun before Ms. Richter would cancel classes. Max was about to press David further when he caught the indignant eye of a Highland hare glaring at them from the librarian’s desk. Swallowing his question, he hurried after David and the two boys disappeared down a narrow stairwell beyond the stacks.

  “We’re going to take my tunnel,” David explained, standing aside as a phalanx of anxious-looking First Years trudged past. “No seats in Bacon,” he warned them. “Try Archimedes—it’s usually less crowded.”

  As the students moaned and reversed course, David slipped by them. Max followed but eyed each warily until he realized his ring had not grown warm.

  “The tunnel will get us fairly close to your old farmhouse and Broadbrim Mountain,” David continued. “From there, it’s a two-week journey overland to Piter’s Folly.”

  “What the heck is Piter’s Folly?” asked Max.

  “It’s all in the dossier,” said David, patting his pack and continuing down the stairs. “Do you need anything from outside our room? Anything from the Red Branch vault?”

  Max shook his head. He’d already borrowed a longsword from the Red Branch’s treasury as a less dangerous alternative to the gae bolga. The temptations he’d experienced earlier when he’d unsheathed the Morrígan blade had confirmed his lurking fears. He simply could not trust himself with the gae bolga in his hand and with friends nearby. The blade was a living thing that hungered for blood; it did not care whose so long as it drank deep. It must be a weapon of last resort.

  “Do you have any money on you?” asked David as they approached the dormitory levels.

  “A few lunes and coppers.”

  “That should be enough,” remarked David, descending yet another flight of stairs until they were below the ground floor.

  “Is the tunnel down here?” Max wondered. “We haven’t packed yet.”

  “The tunnel’s in our room,” David explained. “We need to recruit someone first, and he’s usually playing cards right about now. What time is it?”

  “A little past midnight.”

  “Good,” David chuckled. “Things will be in full swing.”

  Leaving the staircase, David hurried down a narrow, curving hallway of rough stone. Max had not spent much time in the Manse’s underground levels—he was not even sure how many there were. It was plainly evident that nonhuman creatures lived down here. The corridor had a barnlike smell, an aroma of sawdust, wet grass, and warm fur. Torchlight flickered on many doors of different shapes and sizes—oval doors with brass moldings, square panels with centered rings, and narrow porticos whose blue pillars were marked with elegant runes and inelegant graffiti. David went to the nearest and knocked.

  The door cracked open, allowing cigar smoke to trickle out into the hallway. Max heard music within, the tinkling of glasses, and raucous laughter. “The games are full, gentlemen,” said a brusque voice with a French accent. The door promptly shut in the sorcerer’s face. Narrowing his eyes, David knocked again.

  “We want the smee.”

  The door swung open. As smoke plumed into the hallway, Max looked down and saw a raffish red-capped lutin puffing on a miniature cigar. Flicking ash from his velvet lapel, the elfin creature gazed back into the hazy room and gave a derisive snort.

  “You are welcome to him. I will even waive admission.”

  Ducking beneath the archway, Max followed David into a small casino in which dozens of patrons were playing games of chance or quaffing drinks at a travertine bar. Lutins were notorious gamblers, but Max saw a host of other creatures in attendance. A pair of satyrs had joined several lutins at a poker table while a jostling throng of domovoi was crowded around the craps table, shouting, stamping, and pleading with every roll of the dice. Max heard the smee’s theatrical baritone well before he saw him.

  “Let’s paint it red, Lady Fortune!”

  They found the yamlike creature sitting beneath a potted palm, where he was propped on a striped chaise and sipping rum punch through a long straw. Although he had no visible eyes, the smee was avidly following the action at a roulette wheel via a mirror angled above the table. The ball skittered across a blur of numbers, bouncing along until the wheel finally slowed and it settled into a numbered pocket. Several players cheered. The smee drooped like a soggy croissant and sipped dejectedly at his drink.

  “One left, Toby,” called a pretty faun at the table. She was apparently placing the limbless smee’s bets on his behalf. “What you want to do?”

  “That’s your gratuity,” he sulked before suddenly perking up. “Unless! Unlessss the lady cares to let it ride on a romantic journey of chance and excitement?”

  Rolling her eyes, the faun slipped the chip within her purse and checked her makeup.

  “The game is rigged!” roared the smee, knocking over his drink with an angry butt of his dusky head. The glass tottered off the table and shattered. “Scoundrels one and all, you’d cheat a hero of his … of his …” He trailed off, apparently at a loss.

  “I believe the word he’s searching for is dignity?” sniffed a lutin, sorting his pile of chips.

  “Wealth,” suggested another.

  “Impossible,” put in a third. “He’s never had either.” As the table erupted in laughter, the smee slid farther down his pillow.

  “Done to death by slanderous tongue was the Hero that here lies,” he murmured.

  “I thought that must be a hero,” remarked Max, pulling up a chair.

  The smee nearly rolled off the chaise with shock. “Max!” he cried, catching himself and straightening. “David! What are you two doing here?”

  “Looking for you,” replied David. “We’ve got a secret mission and could use your help. What do you say, Toby? ‘Once more into the breach, dear friends’?”

  The smee flipped about to address the nonplussed faun. “Did you hear that, succubus?” he cried. “Rowan’s greatest champions have come requesting my aid. They need me! Find someone else to endure your frivolous poppycock and threadbare ‘epiphanies.’ I have important work to do.…”

  As Max carried him out of the speakeasy, Toby preened like a sultan, swooning with pride and an excess of rum. By the time they�
�d reached the observatory, however, the smee’s mood had sobered.

  “Are we setting out right away?” he wondered, watching as Max and David stuffed clothes, bedrolls, and cooking gear into their packs. “Perhaps we should discuss strategy. I mean … I don’t even know what the mission is about!”

  “We’ll tell you when we get there,” Max muttered, buckling the longsword opposite the gae bolga.

  “And where is ‘there’ precisely?” inquired the smee delicately.

  “Blys,” answered David, deftly fastening his pack with his only hand.

  “But … but there are rumors of war in Blys,” exclaimed Toby. “Isn’t that … dangerous?”

  “It’s not a vacation,” Max quipped, throwing another pair of woolly socks into his pack; in the wilderness, one could never have enough woolly socks. He slipped a warm black cloak over his shoulders, fastening it with the ivory brooch Scathach had given him in the Sidh.

  “Do you have Ormenheid?” asked David, plucking a small glass vial from a shelf and slipping it into his belt pouch. Max nodded and patted his pocket where the dvergars’ marvelous vessel had shrunk down to the size of a matchbox. When set upon the water and given the proper command, the miniature would expand into a Viking longship that could navigate and sail itself against wind, wave, and tide.

  “On second thought,” reflected Toby, “perhaps I overindulged this evening. My head isn’t quite right. I’m feeling downright tipsy. Call me a scalawag, gentlemen, but I think I’d best sleep it off.…”

  “Sorry, Toby,” said Max, plucking up the smee by one end. “This will have to do.” He unceremoniously dunked the creature into a nearby pitcher of water. “Better?”

  “Invigorated,” groused the smee. “And now I will ask you to kindly put me down and never to grab me by that particular part of my anatomy again.”

  Horrified, Max promptly dropped the smee onto its pillow.

  David cleared his throat. “If you’re ready, we’ll be off.”

  “So where is the tunnel?” asked Max.

  “The same place you tried two years ago,” said David, smiling. “But this time, my nosy friend, you’ll have the password.…”

  Max reddened, remembering back to the time when he’d suspected David was going mad. He’d known David was leaving Rowan through some secret passage in their room and had been determined to follow. He’d discovered that David’s bed served as some sort of gateway, but the password had foiled him and he never made his way through.

  Carrying the indignant smee, Max followed his roommate along the ledge on the observatory’s upper level toward David’s bed. Drawing aside its moon-stitched curtains, David unveiled a sleigh bed, half buried beneath unwashed coffee mugs, innumerable manuscripts, half a moldy sandwich, and some sort of grimacing iguana preserved in spirits of wine.

  “Here we are,” he said, oblivious to the mess as he sat near the headboard and swept some papers aside to clear a place for Max. As they had before, the grains in the wood began to swirl about, dancing in and out of focus as they rearranged themselves.

  “Take my hand, Max,” David commanded. “Hold it tightly and keep a firm grip on Toby.”

  Max did so, staring at the headboard with breathless anticipation as the grains formed a familiar pattern.

  Password?

  Max’s roommate said nothing. He merely gazed up at the glass-domed ceiling and the stars beyond while the seconds ticked by.

  “David,” Max hissed. “It’s asking you for the password.”

  “Shhh,” replied the little sorcerer, still staring up at the stars.

  Confused, Max followed his friend’s eyes up to the heavens. A new constellation was forming in the dome, its contours illuminated by slender threads of golden light that connected its stars. A moment later, Max was gazing at an enormous sea creature, its form outlined against the infinite space beyond. At last David spoke.

  “Cetus.”

  A painful jolt accompanied a flash, followed by a spinning blur of lights that brought bile to Max’s throat. Instinctively, he shut his eyes.

  When he opened them, he was in Blys.

  When he opened his eyes, Max found that he was still clutching Toby and sitting next to David as he had at Rowan. But they were no longer in their room; they were sitting on a moldy cot in a run-down villa. A dreary dawn peeked through holes in the sagging roof. Birds were roosting in the rafters, cooing softly and rustling their feathers whenever any icy draft came sweeping through. David released Max’s hand.

  “How do you feel?”

  Max did not reply. He was on the verge of vomiting. Every organ seemed out of place and confused, as though they were still traveling thousands of miles in an instant. Even the room’s dim light caused stabs of pain in Max’s head. Shutting his eyes, he lay back on the bed and waited for the nausea to pass. The smee stirred in his hand.

  “Wh-where are we?” Toby stammered.

  “Blys,” replied David. “In Prusias’s own province. The capital city is a hundred miles or so south. We’re not so far from Max’s old house. We’ll pass it on our way to Broadbrim Mountain.”

  “Why are we going there?” asked Max, releasing Toby and sitting up.

  “Let’s have a seat,” said David, gesturing toward a splintered table in the room’s center. “We’ll examine Sir Alistair’s dossier and discuss the plan. I already have some things in mind.”

  “May I finally slip into something more comfortable?” asked Toby. “It’s emasculating to be plucked up like a stray sock and carried about all the time.”

  “Of course,” said David. “We’re not at Rowan—you’re free to take whatever shape you like.”

  Smees were doppelgängers extraordinaire, creatures capable of mimicking not only another being’s shape, but also its mannerisms, speech, and aura. When Max had first met Toby, the smee was masquerading as a ten-ton selkie to win the affections (and servitude) of the Sanctuary’s selkie sisters, Helga and Frigga. When his fraud was discovered, Toby had been forced to reveal his true shape before all assembled and was thereafter banned from changing shape while at Rowan. When put to a more noble purpose, however, the smee’s talents were exceedingly useful. Not even the terrible demon Mad’raast had been able to penetrate Toby’s disguise when they’d sailed Ormenheid through the Straits that previous spring.

  But it was not a fat merchant who bounded onto the table; it was a squirrel monkey with tawny fur and black, intelligent eyes.

  “I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to have arms and legs!” Toby crowed, swinging his limbs about and peeking back at his prehensile tail. “How luxuriant.”

  Ignoring the smee’s ensuing acrobatics, David set his pack upon the table and pulled out Ms. Richter’s portfolio. When Max asked about light, David directed him to a cobwebbed corner where several lanterns had been stashed along with candles and a small container of oil.

  “Why not glowspheres?” Max wondered, setting the lanterns on the table.

  “No magic,” muttered David, unfolding a map and laying out several sheets of oily-looking paper. “It leaves a trace. No magic unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  Using flint and tinder, Max lit the lanterns and came around so he could look at Sir Alistair’s notes. David had already read the first parchment and handed it to Max. “Careful handling that,” the sorcerer warned. “Florentine spypaper’s very old and extremely fragile. Remember—any marks you make on its surface will be transmitted to its twin.”

  Holding the sheet delicately by its edges, Max leaned forward to examine it by the lantern’s warm yellow light. The paper was covered in tiny writing and diagrams that had faded or sunk into the paper so that they initially appeared to be little more than abstract patterns and blemishes. But peering closely, Max could make out faint sentences of coded Italian, French, and Russian, along with a cross-section of a castle tower and a patent drawing for some sort of loom. Atop these faded secrets was Sir Alistair’s writing, penned in pristine script. The messa
ge was encrypted, however, and utterly nonsensical until David handed Max an oval of rose-colored glass. Once Max peered through the lens, the message became clear.

  Evil is brewing—or building—in the Workshop. I’ve seen its members at royal gatherings, and while never a particularly sociable set, they appear exceedingly nervous and afraid to say or do the wrong thing. My sources say that Prusias has taken a more active interest in their endeavors and has commissioned something secret, some sort of war machine to help him conquer the other kingdoms. The demon’s malakhim have been sent to observe the Workshop’s progress, and I hear that the children of some key engineers have been “apprenticed” to loyal braymas throughout Blys as a means of keeping their parents industrious.

  The Workshop itself is a fortress, and I fear that direct communication—much less infiltration—has become impossible. We must pass along information and gather intelligence using less direct means. Our opportunity may reside with an influential smuggler—a woman who lives in a settlement called Piter’s Folly. She is called Madam Petra, but you may remember her as Petra Kosa—the Olympic medalist who later became a cause célèbre in the art world. She’s an interesting, exceedingly capable woman who has been very savvy at positioning herself with various factions to become a major player within the region. No one can build or buy anything near Piter’s Folly without her approval. Even the goblins pay her tribute when they drive their caravans past on the Ravenswood Spur. She’d be a valuable ally and may be able to contact the Workshop on our behalf or provide intelligence on their initiatives.

  We must tread carefully, however. She has spurned our previous efforts to develop a relationship for fear that Prusias will learn of it and crush both her and her enterprise. The immediate and highly public nature of these rejections suggests that she suspects informers among her staff. She will not meet directly with strangers, and her assistants screen all of her appointments and visitors. In order to speak candidly with Madam Petra, I believe we must masquerade as someone with whom she is familiar and already does business. We must smuggle ourselves in to see the smuggler. While she trades with other human settlements and some demons, she also does a brisk business with the wealthier goblin clans, including the Blackhorns, Highboots, and Broadbrims.…