I come to in a pile of blankets. Head spinning, hand throbbing, vision blurred but clearing. I’m in some sort of hut. A small, mud-brick dome. Firelight dances over the rough walls from a flickering torch beside my bed. Even so, a crisp chill hangs in the air. Dad said nights were cold in Arakaan, but this is ridiculous. The salt outside might as well be snow.
Where am I exactly? How did I get here?
I remember the flank of a horse hot against my cheek. Violet, unconscious, slung over a chestnut mare trotting alongside me. Lazy Eye’s shoulder digging into my guts as he lugged me towards a desert camp, the huts like a cluster of turtles tucked into their shells. I saw a well. Hickory being dragged away. A yard for the horses, and an odd goat-like creature that bleated as we passed. I’m pretty sure I waved a drunken hello to it before I blacked out again.
A tiny village, then. Could be worse, I guess.
I untangle myself from the blankets. Swing my bare feet onto the floor and shiver. Most of my Leatherhead disguise has come undone, and my tunic’s sure seen better days. A fresh bandage has been wound around the gash in my left hand, tied off in a neat little bow.
Mum.
The strands of grey in her hair. The lines on her face. Those brown, blood-shot eyes glaring down at me. The reek of her breath. Her shaking hands.
What happened to her out here?
I run my fingers over the bump in my neck where I felt the sting.
‘Blow dart,’ a voice says behind me.
Mum’s right here in the hut, dressed in a pale brown robe now, slouched down against the wall and clasping an animal-hide waterskin that clearly isn’t filled with water. The front of her robe’s splotchy with dark, dribbled stains. She takes a swig, stifles a burp.
‘Don’t worry. They weren’t poisoned. Just dipped in a mild sedative.’
‘Oh,’ I say. Oh, as if mild-sedative darts are perfectly acceptable.
‘Your friends are fine, by the way. We woke ’em an hour ago.’ Mum adjusts a cushion behind her. ‘Had ourselves a nice chat. They told us everything. You’ve been through a lot.’
‘Yeah, I – I guess we have.’ I swallow hard. ‘Can I see them?’
Mum ignores me. ‘The key’s also safe. Well done, keeping it away from Roth. Top marks, gold star, all that stuff.’ She gives me a thumbs-up. ‘Kudos.’
But she doesn’t seem happy or relieved. Not at all.
Something’s wrong.
I shift on the bed, try to straighten my tunic. I’m not sure why. Mum can barely stand to look at me. Her watery eyes slide to the bed, the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the torch. She stares into the flames, lost in the fire. I clear my throat. ‘Mum –’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she says, a little too forcefully. ‘Please.’
Okay. Baby steps. I guess we’ll work our way up to that one.
‘Elsa,’ I say. Where do I start? What do I say? Suddenly my ten questions seem so stupid. ‘Thank you. For saving us. If you hadn’t come –’
‘You would’ve wandered through the desert for days, like I had to.’ Mum grunts and gets up, staggers over to adjust the raggedy blanket draped over the doorway. Something on the back of her neck glints in the torchlight. The thin chain. Her necklace. The second Cradle key must be tucked under her robe. ‘Seems a lifetime ago now,’ she says, and shrugs. ‘I suppose it was.’
Easy now, Jane. Gotta tread carefully.
‘How long have you been out here, Elsa?’
‘Forty-seven years,’ she says. ‘Nearly half a century of praying, watching, waiting for that gateway to open again.’ She chuckles to herself. ‘Now it’s blocked on the other side – useless – all thanks to you.’
Ouch.
I tell her I’m sorry. That I didn’t have a choice. ‘And there’s still Roth’s gateway, right?’ I add. ‘By the dune sea. Please tell me you know the way from here.’
‘We know the way from here. We’re leaving soon as we can. It’ll be a long journey, but we’ll manage.’ She stares down at her waterskin, gives it a swirl. ‘We always do.’
Forty-seven years. I can’t imagine it. The anger, the hurt, the frustration, the fear, the isolation. I can see her riding out to the gateway every day. Running her hand along the stone, pleading, wishing for it to open again, to let her back inside. Maybe she clawed at the gateway like Hickory, her way home so close, yet so impossibly far away. And all she could do was wait. Wait and grow old in this barren landscape. No wonder she started drinking.
‘We’ll pick up the true key on the way,’ Mum says now, catching me off-guard.
‘I’m sorry, the – the what?’
‘This,’ Mum yanks her necklace, snaps it, tosses me the key, ‘is a fake.’ I hold it up to the torchlight, confused. Even up close, the key looks exactly like mine. ‘It’s a decoy, Jane,’ Mum says. ‘One of three hundred dummy keys forged decades ago. Scattered across the far reaches of Arakaan to conceal the location of the true key in case Roth ever returned.’
‘Three hundred?’ Bloody hell. ‘Well, at least you were thorough.’
‘The true key’s hidden in an ancient city to the west,’ Mum says. ‘A canyon hideout the people of this region fled to long ago. From there we head north.’
‘North,’ I say. ‘Okay. Good. I mean, it’s not ideal, but it’s a plan.’ I huff out a deep breath, feel the first glimmer of hope kindling deep inside. We’re not alone anymore. After all this time scrambling in the dark we have a whole tribe behind us. ‘I’ve gotta say, Mum –’
She flinches at the word again. This time, it bugs me.
‘Look, I know this is strange and weird and really, really difficult for you, but it is for me, too. Growing up without you was tough. I didn’t know who you were, where you were, whether you were dead or alive. I didn’t even know your name. It was just me and Dad and –’
Mum makes a strange sound. I can’t tell if it’s a sob or a laugh. Maybe it’s a bit of both. She holds a hand to the wall for support. Shakes her head in disbelief.
‘My god, you really don’t know …’
The pale, mud-brick walls of the hut seem to close in. ‘Know what?’ I ask.
‘I can’t believe he didn’t tell you,’ Mum says. She paces around the hut, running her hands through her hair, clenching her fists, like she’s trying to wring out her brain. ‘He was supposed to tell you everything. First chance he got. He promised.’
‘Who, Dad?’ I ask. Mum groans. I get up, take a step towards her. ‘He did tell me everything. We wouldn’t have made it here without him, Mum.’
‘I said, don’t call me that,’ she snaps.
We stand in silence. I don’t know what to say, what to do. A tear rolls down Mum’s cheek. Her lip trembles. She looks like a little girl now, a broken child.
‘I can’t do this,’ she says. ‘I thought I was strong enough, but … I’m sorry.’
She clears her throat, shouts something in that foreign tongue. Moments later, somebody’s pushed into the hut. My heart swells.
It’s Violet. She’s dressed in a brown robe of her own now. Looks rattled, even scared.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask her. ‘Did they hurt you?’
‘I’m fine,’ she says, but any idiot could see she isn’t.
Something’s changed. She flinches just like Mum when I reach out to hold her hand. A subtle movement she tries to hide by tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
Mum turns to her. ‘You tell her,’ she says. ‘Better she hear it from a friend.’
‘Don’t do this,’ Violet says. ‘Please.’
But Mum ignores her. Turns to me at last and looks at me. I mean really looks at me. ‘I didn’t ask for any of this,’ she says, and ducks outside into the cold, cold night.
Just like that, she’s gone.
‘Violet, what’s going on? Where’s Hickory?’
‘I don’t know.’ She stares at the blanket draped over the doorway. ‘They took him.’
‘What? Where? What did they do to you? What did they say?’
Violet gestures to the bed. ‘You should sit down.’
‘I just got up.’
‘Please, Jane –’
‘I’m fine where I am, Violet. What did they tell you?’
Violet steels herself. ‘They interrogated us. Me and Hickory. They beat him up. Right in front of me. Tortured him. Said they had to make sure we’re on the right side. So I told them everything. Who we are, where we come from, what we’re looking for. Everything that happened to us inside the Manor.’ She shakes her head. ‘Elsa was drunk. Rambling. Kept repeating, “She doesn’t know,” over and over. Said maybe John couldn’t bring himself to tell you the truth because of everything you’d done for him. That maybe he didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘Hurt me? How could he hurt me?’
Violet walks over to the torch, warms her hands by the flames. ‘You remember what he said. Everything he told us on the train about how he and Elsa were captured.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then you remember there was a gap. He told us how they were imprisoned. How Roth went to see them when Elsa was in labour. How he wouldn’t let John help her until he swore to find the Cradle. And he did. John told us he swore on their lives and Roth let him help her, but he never got to finish the story. Roth came onboard the train and everything went to hell. All we know is they escaped and found the Cradle and released two of the Spectres, but John never told us about the birth.’
Yes, Jane, you were born in the Manor, but –
‘Something went wrong,’ I say, a new colony of wasps swirling round my gut.
Violet nods, turns to face me. ‘Roth let him go too late. John couldn’t help Elsa. Their child … their little baby …’ Her voice trembles. She wipes away a tear. ‘He died.’
I shuffle on my feet, feel weak in the knees. What she’s saying doesn’t make any sense. At all. Her brain’s obviously been muddled by the not-quite-poisoned darts.
‘Violet, I think you need to rest. Maybe lie down for a bit.’
‘I don’t need to lie down, Jane,’ she says, forcefully now. ‘Listen. They had a baby boy, but he only survived a few minutes.’ More tears are streaming down her cheeks, shining in the firelight. ‘They did everything they could to revive him, but –’
‘This is insane. What you’re saying is …’ I can’t stay still, can’t think, can’t breathe. This goddamn hut’s too cramped, and it feels like it’s getting smaller by the second. I need to walk, need to breathe, need to think. Why’s it so hot in here all of a sudden? ‘You’re telling me that – that I’m – that my dad isn’t really my –’
No. It’s crazy. Impossible.
‘Roth kept them in their cell for months afterwards,’ Violet says. ‘The Leatherheads kept taking John out on patrols to find the Cradle – Elsa too, when she was strong enough to walk. And they were making progress. They discovered an engraving of the Cradle symbol in a chamber – a whole trail of them – but the trail always went cold. Roth was losing patience. John and Elsa knew they were running out of time, and that’s when they managed to escape.’
‘Stop.’ The hut’s spinning. I feel sick. I think I’m gonna pass out again. ‘Please.’
‘They fled deep into the Manor. Followed the trail again. But this time it kept going. They found the two keys in a chamber, on some kind of pedestal. They picked them up and the entrance to the Cradle revealed itself. They opened it. Stepped inside. They made it to the foundation stone and … and they found you, Jane. They took you from the Cradle.’
Yes, Jane, you were born in the Manor …
‘… but you’re not our child,’ I whisper to myself, dropping slowly to my knees.
Suddenly it seems so obvious, so real. Somehow, I can feel it. The cold, hard truth at last, sitting in my gut like a block of ice.
‘It explains everything,’ Violet says. Gently. Softly. ‘The quakes. Your dreams. Your connection to the Manor. The reason Roth wants to capture you.’
Hot tears sting my eyes as I claw at the bandage wrapped around my palm. Violet tries to stop me, but I shake her away. The wound’s red and raw, starting to weep again. Not the blood of the man I’ve always called Dad or the woman I thought was my mum.
The blood of the Makers.
‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘I’m the third key.’
