Traveler Page 7

  It was still bright afternoon in Hong Kong, but the Bridge was always in twilight under its canopy, a condition Quin had come to think of as homey and comfortable. She wove through heavy foot traffic, which was illuminated predominantly by warm, yellow lanterns in the restaurants and outside the healing offices on the Bridge’s upper level.

  Her own house was near the center of the Bridge, close to the home of her healing mentor, Master Tan. When she reached it, she slipped out of the crowds and through her front door, which closed behind her with a jingling of bells and shut out the noise of the Bridge. Fiona was in the waiting room of Quin’s healing office, tidying up with an air of having waited impatiently for some time.

  “Hi, Mum. Is Shinobu upstairs?”

  “Is he?” Fiona repeated. She set down a canister of herbs and pinned up her long red hair in a gesture of vexation, obviously annoyed about something. “I should say he is.”

  Her mother’s blue eyes were clear, Quin noticed, and her words crisp—both good signs—and she looked as beautiful as ever. Fiona had stayed away from alcohol since the fight on board Traveler, and she wasn’t working as an escort any longer. Quin and Master Tan were, in fact, instructing her as a novice healer. Sobriety might leave her short tempered, but Fiona looked so much healthier that her moments of anger were, to Quin, like scenes of a film actress pretending to be cross.

  “It’s a good thing he’s up there,” her mother continued, “or he’d be driving me mad.”

  “Is he all right?” Quin asked.

  She felt a prick of worry. Shinobu had spent three days in a Hong Kong hospital, followed by days of intense treatment with Master Tan, who was, in addition to being Quin’s mentor, one of the most respected healers on the Transit Bridge. The hospital had removed the drug implants and bathed his wounds with Eastern-designed cellular reconstructors, which, the doctors had assured her, were superior to the Western versions. Then Master Tan had worked his ancient herbal magic. Shinobu had healed more in his short time back in Asia than he had in two weeks in London. Still, he was not yet recovered.

  “That’s difficult to say,” her mother responded, slapping the cushions on the couch somewhat viciously. Then, seeing Quin’s concern, she held up her hands. “No, no, he’s fine. The acupuncturist was here for an hour—until Shinobu chased him out. And he chased me out as well.” Fiona pointed up the stairs. “I doubt he’ll kick you out, but prepare yourself…At least he’s up and about, I suppose.”

  Halfway through this cryptic narrative, Quin began up the stairs to her bedroom. She saw her mother’s eyes following, and Fiona’s gaze felt freighted with motherly judgment: I can’t stop you from keeping him in your room, it seemed to say, but he’s a much different creature now from the young boy you grew up with.

  Since these words were only implied, Quin couldn’t explain that very little other than sleeping had happened between her and Shinobu. He was the one with all the experience, and he’d been largely unconscious these past weeks, which had left Quin more concerned with keeping him alive than with romance.

  She found her bedroom door shut, and she pushed it open, relieved it wasn’t locked. Shinobu was perched on top of her bed in a half crouch, staring out the round window at Victoria Harbor. He was wearing only his underwear, and his body bristled with acupuncture needles. There were none in his head, however, because he was wearing, Quin saw with alarm, the iridescent metal focal. She spotted a swath of used needles across the floor. Apparently he’d yanked them out of his scalp himself before pulling on the helmet.

  “Hey,” she said cautiously.

  He turned at the sound of her voice, and his eyes were bright and much more alert than they’d been before she left for Mariko’s house, but they also looked a bit wild. He was standing on the bed like a cobra, ready to strike.

  “Hey yourself,” he said, jumping down to the floor.

  She tried to grab him, but he landed fine without help. “You really shouldn’t be jumping just yet,” she told him.

  “No, it’s all right. Nothing hurts right now.” He stood very close and smiled down at her. “Everything feels good.”

  The helmet gave off a faint crackling sound, and small red forks of electricity were crawling around its edges, across Shinobu’s forehead. Quin touched one gently.

  “Sunlight,” he said. “I left it sitting in sunlight to charge it. Just like a disruptor.”

  “When did you put it on?” she asked. Though her real question was why?

  “I’m not quite sure,” he answered, as though nothing could be more natural than his uncertainty. “A few minutes? Or a day?”

  “What do you mean you aren’t sure?” She grew more alarmed. Had he been wearing it for so long that he’d lost track? Did that mean hours? Her mind went to the focal instructions in her pocket. Shinobu hadn’t followed any of them. And yet she didn’t think it would be a good idea to yank it off him unexpectedly.

  “How long I’ve been wearing it doesn’t feel important,” he explained.

  He took hold of her shoulders with both hands, as though he would kiss her, or perhaps eat her alive. The needles on the backs of his hands swayed as he moved.

  “Quin, you have to try it. It—it—it does something. Something amazing. You start to be…It lets you see everything.”

  “I’m going to take it off you now,” she told him.

  “Already? Why?” He looked upset. His hands went to the sides of the helmet to hold it on.

  “You’ve been wearing it long enough,” she said firmly. She took his hands from the focal, thankful when he put up no physical resistance, and pulled it off his head.

  Immediately Shinobu groaned and collapsed.

  “Wait!” Quin said, grabbing him under the arms to prevent him from crushing acupuncture needles deeper into his skin by sitting on them. “Don’t sit. Try to stand.”

  He clutched his head, as though it were killing him, and moaned again, but he managed to stay on his feet. Quin plucked every needle from his body as quickly as she could, then helped him over to the bed. He sat heavily on the mattress. A hand went to his stomach and he closed his eyes.

  “I’m dizzy…” he murmured.

  “Lie back.”

  She carefully pushed him flat. What had possessed him to try the focal before she returned? Was it his thrill-seeking nature or simple curiosity? His cheeks were flushed, and his heart rate was fast but slowing down as she felt his neck.

  He opened his eyes and looked up at her.

  “I’m all right now,” he whispered. “I felt sick for a moment…but it’s gone now.” He noticed her hovering over him, and he smiled a lazy smile. “I see you’ve conveniently gotten me into your bed.”

  “Idiot!” she said, pushing his shoulder.

  “Oof,” he answered, and pulled her down onto him. “How can you hit me when everything already aches?”

  “Idiot,” she said again, more softly. He wrapped his arms around her, but she held him away so he had to look at her. “You can’t just put on that helmet. It’s not a toy. It can probably hurt you if you don’t use it right.”

  “It did hurt me,” he murmured. “I got dizzy, and everything aches again. Kiss me and make it better.”

  “Shinobu.” She didn’t feel like flirting or joking. She wasn’t sure how many more times she could stand to see him collapse in front of her. “Why did you put it on?”

  He looked back at her seriously and finally appeared to have returned to himself. “I was lying in bed all day, bored,” he told her. “It was stupid. I’m sorry.”

  “Your mother gave me instructions for using it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but later. When you’re better. When we can be careful about it.”

  “All right. Of course,” he said.

  Quin sighed and slowly began to relax.

  “I’m no end of trouble and I’m sorry,” he murmured to her. She could hear in his voice that the focal’s influence—whatever it was—had fully worn off
. “Will you forgive me?”

  “Probably,” she said grudgingly.

  He pulled her closer. Now that he wasn’t in immediate danger of damaging himself, Quin became aware of their position on the bed, the way his smile pulled up one side of his face slightly more than the other. He was watching her through half-closed eyes.

  “Now you’re going to kiss me, right?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Quin murmured.

  And then she did kiss him, because she loved him, even if he was reckless. Half the time, his recklessness saved her life.

  The kiss was nice but very one-sided.

  “Are you falling asleep while I’m kissing you?” she asked him when she realized that this was exactly what was happening.

  Shinobu’s eyes opened with difficulty, then shut again. His painkiller implants had all been removed, so this was real exhaustion. “Of course not,” he whispered. “Kiss me more.”

  But in a few moments he was in a deep sleep, so deep that he didn’t respond, even when she shook his shoulder. Quin looked across the room at the focal, which she’d set on her desk. What did that helmet do, precisely, to the person who wore it?

  John tended to the fire and their dinner while the Young Dread paced. They were in their little camp inside the workshop on the estate, the same place he’d visited Maud once, the year before, the first time she’d agreed to help him. But now he was living here with her, sleeping restlessly each night on a pile of straw in one corner, wrapped in his cloak, while the Young Dread slept, still and deep, across the workshop from him, cocooned in her own cloak like a small, dark angel carved upon a tombstone.

  Their hearth was by the open workshop doors, a large circle of stones filled with the ashes of all their cooking fires. A new fire was burning bright orange as John roasted their dinner.

  On the wall near the hearth were drying racks where they cured the skins of the animals they hunted together. Several pelts were stretched there, and Maud and John were both wearing vests of fox fur against the cold of the evening.

  Along the back wall of the workshop were old shelves and racks of knives and swords that had been rescued from the other destroyed buildings on the estate. They used everything for training.

  The Young, who was usually so motionless except when action was required, was pacing back and forth in front of the cooking fire, unable to sit down. He’d never seen her like this, but she hadn’t chosen to explain her state of mind, so he was waiting for her to speak. He hoped she wasn’t still angry about his earlier disobedience, when he’d chased after Briac Kincaid. If she chose not to teach him anymore, he didn’t know what he would do.

  John forced himself to look away from her. He had his mother’s journal in his lap, which he’d been studying by the light of the fire. He’d done this each night since he’d recovered the journal from a pocket in Quin’s cloak, as they all plummeted to the ground on board Traveler. Quin had given it back to him. Even if she hadn’t meant to, she’d helped him.

  Maud stopped at the doorway of the workshop and looked out at the absolute darkness the night had become. It was perhaps three in the morning and very foggy.

  “Do you want to speak?” John asked at last.

  She turned toward him, her features outlined in the glow of the firelight. Her expression was as calm and clear as it always was; only something in her eyes matched the restlessness of her body. She didn’t answer.

  John skewered the pieces of rabbit meat and turned them over on the metal grate. The bullet wound near his shoulder was throbbing, though it hurt him much less in recent days. His eyes slid back to the journal.

  His mother’s notebook was both self-explanatory and very difficult to make out. The first half seemed to be a page-by-page recounting of the Middle Dread’s misdeeds and the justice he’d handed out to unruly Seekers. Those pages were written in ancient hands and were very difficult to read. However, John’s grandmother Maggie had often made him read aloud to her from very old books, many of them handwritten, so he’d had practice with archaic English and could decipher much in those early journal pages. He’d asked Maud for help translating what he couldn’t understand, but she’d refused. In fact, she’d refused to give the journal anything more than a casual glance.

  I have rid the world of the Middle, she’d told him the first time he’d tried to show her the book and explain what he thought it contained. I have no wish to read an accounting of what he’s done. His crimes were many, though most were long ago. I should have killed him sooner.

  John wasn’t much interested in the Middle’s crimes or justice either, so he hadn’t asked for help again. His interest lay in the second half of the book, where his mother—and others—had cataloged the last known appearances of Seekers and athames from the various houses.

  According to the journal, there were originally ten Seeker families and each had once possessed an athame. But most of these athames hadn’t been seen since twenty years, fifty years, a hundred years before John had been born. Where they were now and why they had disappeared were both mysteries—at least to Catherine and her journal. But she’d been looking for them. Or, perhaps, she’d been looking for some of them—the houses that had done harm to her own house.

  For generations, other Seeker houses had targeted and killed his family. Someday you will destroy the houses who have harmed us, his grandmother Maggie had told him after his mother’s death. You will become what we were in the beginning, powerful but good. She had been echoing his mother’s own words: Our house will rise again, and the others will fall.

  When he touched the book’s pages, he thought of his mother’s hands, handling the same leaves, filling them with her clear, feminine writing. And he thought of Quin, though he didn’t want to. She’d had this journal in her possession. Her hands had touched it as well. When his eyes ran down a line of text, he could feel her eyes doing the same.

  What did she think of this? he wondered. And what is she thinking now?

  Abruptly Maud turned away from the doorway and took a seat across the fire from John. Her gaze settled upon him. It was always uncomfortable, her direct stare, like being sized up by a leopard. Her long, light brown hair hung down around her shoulders, adding to the impression of wildness.

  “I do not know those boys,” she said simply. “I am certain I have not seen them before. They are no Seekers I have ever met.”

  The rabbit was done cooking. Silently John pulled the meat from the grate and handed her a portion on one of the rough boards they used for meals. The Young Dread received the food but held it out in front of her, as though not actually aware of its presence.

  “Do you know every Seeker?” he asked her.

  “I should be able to place them, by looks, by house. I should have some sense of the family to whom they belong.”

  “How could you expect to know everyone?” he asked.

  Maud couldn’t be much older than John. In fact, she looked younger. Even though her lifetime had spanned a great length of years, much of that time, she’d explained, had been spent There—hibernating, or sleeping, or “stretched out,” as she liked to call it—so the actual duration of her time here in the real world, of her time awake, could not be much more than John’s, could it?

  She said simply, “If they were Seekers, I would know them, and I do not.” Taking notice of the food in front of her, she began to eat. After a few moments, she appeared to come to a decision, and she asked John, “What does your book say about the house of the boar?”

  John tried to hide his surprise at this interest in the journal. “The boar? Why that one?”

  “Those boys had an athame, and there was a boar carved upon it.”

  “So…couldn’t they be Seekers from the house of the boar?” he asked.

  “No,” Maud responded, “they’re not.”

  When she offered no further explanation, he set his tray aside, wiped his hands carefully, and flipped through the book. In the second half of the journal there was a page with a
boar sketched along the top. He held it up for Maud to see.

  “She made a record,” he explained, “of places where the Seekers in the house of the boar were seen, places where their athame was seen. Like here.” He pointed to one of the earliest notes under the drawing of the boar. “1779, Spain, near the city of Valencia.”

  “What is the last location on that list? The most recent place the boar athame was seen?”

  His eyes ran down the next few pages.

  “Here. Norway, eighteen years ago, in the possession of Emile Pernet, house of the boar.” He showed her the line of text. “No one saw the boar athame after that—until now, I guess.”

  “Emile,” the Young Dread repeated.

  “Do you know him?”

  “I have heard his name once,” she told him. “And what is that, beneath the writing?” She’d moved closer to look at the journal, so they were sitting shoulder to shoulder.

  “A sketch of someplace.”

  Catherine had pasted in a drawing of a barren landscape with sharp rocks strewn across it and a low, dark cave in the distance. There were several such drawings in the journal. Maud took the book from him and gazed at this picture intently.

  “Those are coordinates she’s written from an athame,” he said. “Do you recognize the location?”

  Beneath the drawing were symbols from the dials of an athame—surely they were instructions for finding that cave. The Young Dread had begun teaching him about his athame and its symbols. They’d even used the device a few times, to travel from London to the estate and to other nearby locations, though she didn’t let him wield the ancient tool himself, and in fact kept him blindfolded during the process; he wouldn’t be able to use it until he’d taken his oath. But when he was a full Seeker, the athame would allow him to follow coordinates in the journal, retrace his mother’s footsteps to find those houses that had torn down his own.

  The Young Dread was still studying the drawing. At length she said, “If that is a cave, I may recognize the location, but it makes little sense. If it is where I suspect it may be, it should have been a safe place for Emile—not the last place his athame would be seen before disappearing.” She kept the journal in her hands and tapped her fingers upon it. “May I look at this for a little while?” she asked him.