Quartz (35 page)

Raman beamed. “We’ll be right back, my dear.” He pecked at Isabella’s cheek, missed by several inches and caught her shoulder instead. Above his head, Isabella looked pained.

“You brought him here,” Rafe mouthed, turning the youth around by a shoulder. The lavatory door hissed and slid aside, and Rafe propelled Raman through the doorway and into a gold-and-white marble cavern. Soft music drifted through the air and several fountains poured foamy water into scalloped basins. A massive sunken bath occupied one corner, a glass-and-tile stall stood in another. Mirrors of various sizes hung on the walls; elegant silver tables covered with glass jars stood under them. Urns and pots and pillars divided the room. Rafe finally located a place for Raman to relieve himself behind a screen of potted ferns, fronds entwined in loving embrace.

While the youth was occupied, Rafe examined a nearby table. Sweet-tasting water gushed out into a leaf-shaped basin. He filled the least decorative of the empty bottles with water, tore open a packet from his pocket, and dumped its powdery contents into the liquid. He stoppered it and swished the liquid around until it was almost as clear as before, only a few grains swirling lazily in the colorless depths. Too small for Raman to notice in his condition. Rafe crumpled the packet and stuffed it back into his capacious pocket.

Raman staggered out from behind the screen. “I say. I’m having the hardest time with this.” He collapsed against Rafe’s shoulder, his trousers still unfastened. “I need a drink.”

“Here. This will help.” Rafe closed Raman’s fingers around the bottle and tipped the water down Raman’s throat. Much of it splashed on to the youth’s chest, but in his inebriated state it wouldn’t take much to push him into unconsciousness.

Raman managed to hold himself upright for a moment. “Well?” he announced brightly. “Shall we see what Mirados has just acquired? Oh my.” A peculiar expression crossed his face, as if he was going to be sick.

Rafe moved out of the way, in case he was.

“My tongue feels like it’s been rolled in cat shit. This stuff tastes rotten.” Raman’s eyes rolled back into his head and he fell to the floor in a graceless faint. The glass bottle chinked as it fell out of Raman’s lax fingers, and rolled away into a corner.

Rafe dragged the youth to a more comfortable, better-hidden spot behind the ferns and fished a keyring of shining discs from his pocket.

Isabella met him outside the door. “You hit him?”

“No, used the powder Sable gave me.”

“Pretty potent drug,” she commented.

“It wasn’t supposed to act that fast,” said Rafe. “It must have been all that alcohol in his system.”

“Then I hope you haven’t killed him.”

“Where do we start?” Rafe looked around.

“The passageways lead to the public galleries—open to visitors if they ask politely and make a deposit of their souls, according to Raman. If we’re lucky, the Key will be here and not in the super-private collection which no one but Mirados sees. He won’t even take souls for a glimpse at those.”

“
If
we’re lucky.”

They weren’t.

After a thorough search of the adjoining chambers, including peering behind frames and looking into urns, they still had not turned up the Key.

They turned their attention to the locked door, a tougher twin of the one they had come through. It was reinforced with even more ka, and the only discernable opening mechanism was a circular slot half the size of Rafe’s palm right in the center. Isabella tried Raman’s disc-shaped keys in the slot. None worked. They even fetched the unconscious noble from the bathroom and pressed his hand against likely-looking plates.

Nothing.

“Well, he is only a nephew, and feckless one at that,” said Isabella as they returned Raman to his hiding place.

Rafe looked at the door with what he was fast coming to think of as his ka-sight. A complicated tangle of ka-threads surrounded it. He tweaked one, but his mental touch slid right off.

“Well?”

Rafe shook his head. “It’s almost like a puzzle, but…” He jerked. Something popped inside his skull, creating a vacuum. Silence and darkness rushed in to fill the space, leaving him deaf and blind.

It took Rafe a moment to realize that his eyes and ears still worked.

“Rafe, what happened?”

“The ka. It’s gone.” Rafe stared at the door. Some of the ka still threaded the metal, but most of it had just—vanished.

“Quick, then, before it comes back.” Isabella picked at the door lock with a knife.

“Wait.” Rafe withdrew something from his pocket. A red-and-white paper-covered tube with a long fuse lay in his palm.

“A fire cracker?”

“An explosive.” Rafe grinned. “I hope you don’t mind me bartering some of Rocquespur’s candlesticks for this. There was a Clearwater mining train next to us at the Gathering Place.”

Isabella laughed. “Oh, why not? It’s not as if the candlesticks were going to help us open this door.” She stepped aside. “Do it.”

“It might bring Metal Man running,” Rafe warned.

Isabella shook her head. “He’s only charged with keeping undesirables from that door. I think you’ll find the automatons are more ready to obey the letter of the law than the spirit.”

“Sounds like many privates who served under me.” Rafe stuffed the explosive into the key-hole and lit the fuse. “Stand back.” He ran across the chamber and hunched behind a pillar, shoulder-to-shoulder with Isabella. Strands of hair had come loose from her elaborate hairdo. They tickled his cheek.

The explosion was a mere pop and fizzle, a small flash of light and a whiff of chemicals.

For a few moments, Rafe thought that the explosive had no effect. Then he saw that the key-hole was several inches larger and the door itself looked rather loose. While Isabella examined the panels that made up the door, Rafe wrapped his neckcloth around his hand. He jiggled the internal mechanism of the lock. Metal groaned as the inner whorls ground together and widened until they formed a good-sized hole.

Rafe grinned at Isabella. “Hope that dress won’t hold you up too long!” he said and climbed through. He jumped into a dimly-lit corridor and jogged down it, gaze probing the shadows. From behind came a ripping noise, and the sound of nimble feet hitting the floor.

The dress hadn’t held Isabella up at all.

“I feel it. It’s here,” he called over his shoulder.

Small chambers, little more than alcoves, led off from the corridor. Rafe peered into one. All it contained was a life-sized statue of a man chained to a rock, breast torn open to reveal a heart forever frozen in agony.

The next alcove held a wicked-looking contraption, all sharp points and sharp blades, hammers and balls, with a man-shaped depression in the center of it.

“So this is Mirados’ fun side,” commented Rafe. “Charming.”

They peered into the next alcove, which held an orrery built into a quartz pedestal. A hinged bronze arm held up a miniaturized representation of their disc-shaped world. The landscape was equisitely detailed: the seas in solid wavelets of sapphire, rives as traceries of turquoise in carnelian plains, the Black Mountains as sharp peaks of obsidian, the White Range in rounded humps of milky quartz.

The disc was bounded with a bronze rim, with brackets at either end. These held a slender, silver circular track that rotated around the disc. An opalescent white ball slipped bead-like on it. Selene.

A gold jointed arm was also attached to one of the hinges. The arm was below the disc, under the circular track, and held a sphere of bright yellow tourmaline. Salerus.

Unlike the silver track which swung in stately fashion, the mechanical action of the arm had malfunctioned. It jittered in its place, sending vibrations throughout the orrery.

A transparent sphere enclosed the orrery; upon its inner surface were scattered silver droplets of stars.

At first glance, the orrery was a perfect representation of Newvalian mechanics. Rafe stepped forward to take a closer look, but Isabella shook her head at him. Reluctantly, he turned back into the corridor and they went on.

“It’s dark in this area,” said Isabella.

Rafe’s scalp prickled; somehow it was sinister for there to be total dark in light-loving Shimmer. “Do you sense something?” he asked.

“No. Do you?”

Rafe listened. Nothing lovingly whispered murderous thoughts to him. “No, not from here. But this way…” Something strong and familiar tugged him down the corridor, which bent around two corners before straightening out again.

Rafe led the way into a series of chambers, finally stepping into an alcove. “Ah.” They stood side-by-side, staring at the last Key.

This one was the most detailed of the group, with gold trees and cavorting deer all over its deep green surface. It stood in its own stand, and when Rafe reached out, it gave a hum of recognition.

It lifted easily, almost eagerly, into his hands. Rafe stood a moment, enjoying the warmth and power it emanated.

Isabella beckoned from the doorway. “Hurry.”

Rafe stuffed the Key into his pocket. They took two steps into the corridor, and the lights dimmed further, ominously low.

“Listen.” Rafe stopped. A growl began beneath his feet, vibrated through his bones.

“Keep going!” Isabella grabbed his hand and they ran, her skirt swishing against his leg, his hip crashing against stone as they rounded corners. The wall-lights flickered like candles in the wind—was it his imagination or was the very air getting heavier, pressing down on his shoulders and expanding into stone in his lungs?—and the doorways were gaping jaws into the subterranean as they fled past. The Key thunked against Rafe’s thigh; Isabella’s hand was warm in his own sweat-slicked one. They stumbled and tripped, but one was always there to pull the other along. When they ran flat out together like this, strides matching, Rafe had a sudden ludicrous feeling of happiness, as if all tangled emotions, past betrayals, words unsaid, secrets untold, his fate and the fate of his world was swallowed up in this present moment—this movement, this pump and ache of muscles, this pounding of blood and hammering of hurt, this burning of air, this squeal of shoes against floor, this slap of marble against feet.

A feeling that was abruptly cut off as they barely stopped themselves from slamming into a closed door that had not been there before.

Rafe stared at it, dropped Isabella’s hand, and threw his shoulder against the door. The redhot aliveness still coursed through his blood. He pushed, he shoved, ran his hands all over that cold hard surface, looking for a hole, an indentation, a handle, anything he could grab and poke and wrench.

Nothing.

Without ceremony, the lights winked out.

Rafe’s ragged breath was loud in his ears. “Did you bring Raman’s keys?” he asked.

“They won’t work,” said Isabella flatly.

“Give them to me.”

“It’s not—”

“Just give them!” All that free-flowing energy that had powered his muscles was pent-up, dammed, and rising in a tide of frustration and rage. He held out his hand and somehow, despite the darkness, Isabella managed to slap them down smartly onto his palm.

“Several useless keys coming right up,” she said crisply.

Rafe did not bother to reply. One by one, he slid the keys over the door, trying to find some place they might fit into. Tongue firmly behind teeth glued shut, he worked with a savage meticulousness, eliciting squeaks of protest from the keys as they scraped against that unyielding surface.

The last key failed to produce an open door. Rafe uttered an oath, and threw down the key ring. It landed with a weak
chink
.

“Rafe?” That was Isabella, from farther away, sounding as if she stood with her back to him, guarding the way they had come from.

“Yes?”

Her low voice was as tight as a coiled spring. “Get out whatever lighters you have and anything that you don’t mind seeing go up in flame.”

Sweat prickled down Rafe’s back. A sound nibbled at the edge of his hearing.

“I may have been wrong about Shimmer,” whispered Isabella.

Scritch scritch.

T
HEY SAT IN THE
chamber with the torture device. They’d picked the place because it was near the door and its contents could be salvaged for fuel. A small fire, nestled by strips of Isabella’s dress, burned through a bed of scrap paper—a newssheet from a week ago and a receipt for a new hat, the only tangible summation of Rafe’s life. Rafe watched the headline, A
NTIMACHINISTS
A
TTACK
S
UBSTATION
, glow in the heat, then blacken and curl into ash. He wondered what was going on in Oakhaven, whether Leo was alive, whether Tristan had been forgiven. He no longer felt that cold hard knot of bitterness; it was hard to feel that angry when he was trapped in the darkness, waiting for the Soul Eaters to claim him. Shimmer was a dream, but Oakhaven felt like a memory of a memory, a place where another Rafe had walked and laughed and played cards and flirted with debutantes, in a time where the whole city seemed to be laid out like a plush carpet at his feet.

There was very little feeling in those feet now. It was cold as well as dark, and an aching absence where ka should’ve been. Rafe shifted a little, glancing at Isabella who stared, frowning, into the flames. Her only paper contribution was a train ticket from Clearwater to Longstown, a trip she did not explain, and one Rafe did not ask about. He would not have been surprised to see her produce a ticket from Selene to the Point.

“We’re on our own, Rafe,” Isabella finally said. “No one’s coming. Not Sable, not Mirados, not his minions—no
one
, save the krin.”

“You can’t know that. Mirados will want to question us, or gloat over our fate. He’ll make an appearance and we can bargain or charm our way out. You charm, and I’ll bargain. Or maybe”—Rafe peered at Isabella’s stony face— “the other way around.”

“He won’t come. Not into the dark. Not a Shimmerite. He’ll let the krin have their way with us, then turn up the lights as bright as they will go. In a few days, the automatons will be along with their white gloves and quiet feet and clean the place up. Put everything back the way it was, so that Master Mirados doesn’t have to face unpleasantness.” Repressed virulence vibrated through her voice. “So much for there not being any krin in Shimmer. Mirados is using them to do his dirty work.”