CHAPTER TWELVE

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WHEN HORACE GOT BACK TO THE OUBLIMORT, HE WAS RELIEVED to see Chloe had already made it across. He found her on the far side, standing at the bottom of the stairs with her chin held high, her dark hair ruffling slightly in the wind that rose up from the Maw. “First try, in case you two were wondering,” she said, her voice lifting on the breeze.

“We weren’t, but good. I’m glad.”

“So what was that all about?”

Horace wasn’t sure what to say, part of him still thinking about Brian and his long confinement underground, part of him still probing discontently at the Fel’Daera’s mysterious silver sun. “We were just . . . talking.”

“You guys besties now?”

“I like him. You do too.”

Chloe frowned. Side by side they started back up the Perilous Stairs, Horace still holding the Fel’Daera in his hands.

“He’s kind of annoying,” Chloe said.

“He’s smart,” Horace pointed out. “You like smart.”

“I do like smart, but I’m not sure he qualifies. He’s not smart enough to stop Mr. Meister from imprisoning him down here.”

Now it was Horace’s turn to frown. “You should probably cut him some slack on that.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

“You say that a lot.”

“Yes, and you keep doing it.”

Chloe sighed. After a few moments she elbowed him gently. “See, Horace, you’re smart.”

They climbed on. Horace ran his thumb in circles around the silver sun. A single thought kept burning at him like a nest of angry bees in his stomach, getting buzzier—Brian knew something about the Fel’Daera that he didn’t. And Mr. Meister too. It made him want to retch. He flicked the box open and closed, open and closed, watching his own feet disappear on tomorrow’s stairs. Gradually he became aware that Chloe’s eyes were on him. He started to put the box back into its pouch but couldn’t quite bring himself to let it go.

“I’m feeling . . . antsy,” he said before she could ask. He gripped the box hard and shook it. “Actually, you know what? I feel like I’m going to explode.”

Chloe came to a dead stop on the stairs. “What’s going on?”

Horace closed his eyes and probed at the box, trying to think of it as a machine—an assemblage of parts. For a moment, he imagined he could feel the silver sun, but then it slipped away. He clenched his teeth and looked over at Chloe. “Brian told me something.”

“Right, I know. Man talk.”

“No, I mean he told me something about the Fel’Daera.” Feeling weirdly ashamed—almost as if the box had betrayed him, he realized—he told her what Brian had revealed, and what he had not.

Chloe listened carefully and considered it. She kicked a cluster of loose pebbles over the edge and watched them disappear into the gloom below. “So there’s something new to learn. Don’t freak out. That’s good news. We learn new stuff about our Tan’ji all the time. Look at me—I’ve been Tan’ji for seven years and I only recently learned how to go underground.”

“But that’s because you were afraid to do it,” Horace pointed out, making Chloe scowl. “This is something totally new—something I never even imagined.”

“Okay, so, you’ll just have to figure it out.”

“When? I don’t have time.”

“That’s ironic.”

“Very funny,” Horace said. He kicked his own shower of grit out into the Maw. “What I mean is, I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it until I figure it out. And I can’t figure it out here—not with all this going on, with that thing in your pocket. Not with us heading off to set our trap. Or our rescue, or whatever it is.”

Chloe turned and started climbing again. “So don’t go. Stay here and figure it out.”

“How can I not go?” Horace said, following after her. “You heard Mr. Meister—the Fel’Daera will be of great use to us today.”

“You’re not Brian. You don’t have to do what Mr. Meister tells you.”

“Easy for you to say. You do whatever you want.”

“Well, maybe you should too.” When Horace grunted skeptically, she threw up her hands. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Just be Horace. Be the Keeper of the Fel’Daera. That’s who you are, and nobody can change that.”

Horace lapsed into silence. How could he be the Keeper of the Fel’Daera when others knew something about it that he didn’t? They climbed the rest of the way without speaking. When they got to the top, Chloe kept moving, heading for Mr. Meister’s doba.

They found the old man inside, sitting at his desk. As they entered, he was peering at a large roll of parchment. A chart or a map of some kind, it looked like. Around it lay the usual assortment of Tanu, both familiar and strange—the massive book with pages a half inch thick, the golden dial with a red needle centered on Mr. Meister; a delicate silver filigree crown; a life-sized, paper-thin oak leaf that appeared to be made of wood. Neptune was here, too, floating easily ten feet off the ground with her cloak wrapped around herself as if she were cold. She waved down at them. With her Tan’ji, a small stone called a tourminda, she could escape the force of gravity—not to fly, as she liked to point out, but to float.

Higher still, the pocketed red wall of the place curved into a high dome. Every inch of the wall was covered with shelves and nooks and cubbies, containing all manner of wonders. Horace spotted the little cyclops owl with the gleaming yellow eye, and the heavy chest that held the burned-out crucible. There were bird-related things everywhere, including some actual living birds. And then he caught his breath. The Laithe of Teneves sat high on a shelf behind the desk. The little globe spun slowly, blue and white and brown and unmistakably alive. Horace gazed at it, feeling woozy. The same hands that made this had made the Fel’Daera.

“Are we all right?” Mr. Meister said.

“Super,” said Chloe. She nudged Horace.

Horace pulled his eyes away from the Laithe. Now that Horace knew Brian had made Mr. Meister’s red vest, he recognized it as Tan’ji, but it was a strange kind of recognition, like a faint reflection on the surface of rippling water. Once again he wondered how it was possible to have two Tan’ji at once. He watched Mr. Meister roll up the parchment and noticed his Möbius-strip ring. Was that yet another Tan’ji? Somehow the very question—maybe being reminded of everything that had been kept from him, and all the things he still didn’t know—made Horace’s outrage flare up again. The silver sun. Sil’falo Teneves. His mother.

“I was just talking to Neptune,” Mr. Meister said, “and she thinks she knows of a place where we can—”

“I can’t do that right now,” Horace said.

Mr. Meister blinked. A little black bird flitted by overhead, from one compartment to another. “Is that so?”

“Yes. I need you to tell me about the silver sun.”

Mr. Meister’s thoughtful gaze lit across the box, then back up to Horace’s face. He took a deep breath. “No.”

Neptune drifted slowly to the floor, her wide, innocent eyes stretching even wider. “You’ll want some privacy, of course,” she said, nodding her way out of the room. She and Chloe murmured terse, polite good-byes to each other. Chloe apparently had no intention of leaving.

“I need to know,” Horace demanded. “Brian already told me the silver sun does something.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. You knew he would. You wanted me to open the box in front of him.”

“I made no mention of the box.”

Horace couldn’t remember if that was true or not, but the old man’s flat, reasonable tone aggravated him even further. “I wish you wouldn’t pretend. You wanted Brian to see me use the box.”

Mr. Meister spread his hands, conceding the point. “I admit I thought it would be informative, yes.”

“So that he would tell me I’ve been using the box wrong.”

Mr. Meister leaned forward abruptly, bushy eyebrows working hard. “You are a brilliant Keeper, a prodigy. You have astonished us all. Never once have I said or thought you were using the box in the wrong way.” He held Horace’s gaze steadily.

“But?”

Mr. Meister sat back in his seat, tugging at his red vest. He fiddled with the Möbius-strip ring on his finger. “But,” he said at last, “if you are asking me if untapped potential still remains within the Fel’Daera, the answer is yes.” He spread his hands wide. “A month ago we sat in this very room and I practically told you as much.”

“And what is that untapped potential?”

“I cannot tell you that.”

“Cannot?”

“Will not.”

Horace began pacing, fuming inside. He felt like he was in the Find all over again, sick and lost and desperate for answers. The Fel’Daera buzzed in his hand, as if sensing his frustration. He glanced up at the Laithe of Teneves, and for a moment almost spilled everything he knew about his mother. But no. Not now. He kept his anger in focus. “You have all these rules about not teaching us how our instruments work. About letting us figure it out on our own. But you break those rules all the time, whenever it suits you.”

“For example?”

“For example, you told me how the very act of opening the box changes the future I see. You told me all that stuff about free will. Why did you tell me that? Why didn’t you let me find that out for myself?”

“I confess I have walked a thin line. But those were refinements of ideas you had already begun to explore yourself. It was you who figured out that the box could send objects into the future. It was you who realized the box allowed you to actually witness the future firsthand.”

“But you gave me help even before that. The very first day I found the Fel’Daera—remember? You told me I can’t keep anything inside the box. You told me not to open the box without reason.”

“Mere hints whose true meanings you had to come to on your own. They were distant beacons, not explicit instructions.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You think I am toying with you. I assure you I am not.”

“I think you don’t even know what your own rules are.”

Mr. Meister clenched his jaw. “I freely admit that sometimes I do not. But once again, Keeper, you have fallen victim to your own tendency to underestimate both me and the dangers we face. Yes, every Keeper should navigate his own path through the Find. Yes, I took risks with the hints I gave you the day you claimed the Fel’Daera—hazy though those hints were. Yes, every time I talk to you about the function of the box, I risk tainting the bond.” His voice grew stern, and one of his bony hands balled into a trembling fist. “But the times are desperate, and as you say, the caution is mine to exercise or ignore as I see fit.”

“Why? Because you’re the Chief Taxonomer?”

Mr. Meister looked startled. For a moment Horace could almost have sworn that a flicker of sadness swept across the old man’s face. “If you like, yes,” Mr. Meister said. “What I say and do weighs heavy on you all.”

Chloe spoke for the first time. Horace had almost forgotten she was even there. “A month ago—in this very room—you told us you weren’t the chief of anything.”

“Titles are irrelevant. Only our abilities matter. But because of my abilities, my word carries weight—with you, Chloe, and with Gabriel, with Neptune. With all the Tan’ji gathered in this place. And particularly with you, Horace. I cannot allow my word to fall too heavily, to influence you too much. You must trust me on this.”

“Why particularly with me?”

“Because as others influence you, so in turn do you influence the Fel’Daera. And this can lead to disaster, because what the Fel’Daera reveals affects us all. Have you forgotten the message you left in your toolshed, the night of the fire? How Chloe’s determination to leave compelled you to see a future in which you felt safe allowing her to do so?”

Just being reminded of that mistake, a mistake that had almost cost Chloe her life, made Horace’s anger flare higher. “So you won’t tell me about the silver sun.”

“I will not.”

“Then I need time to figure it out—on my own, apparently.”

“We do not have time. The Keeper of the crippled Tan’ji approaches even as we speak, drawn by the daktan. We do not know what to expect. We need the Fel’Daera’s help. Your help.”

“I can’t help you right now. I can’t even think straight. Maybe you should have thought of that before you got Brian to tell me how little I actually know about my own Tan’ji.”

“Apparently I should have. And had I known you would pout like a child when you discovered you still had more to learn, I never would have opened that door. Your pride does you no credit, Keeper.”

That was more than Horace could take. Horace whirled to face Chloe. He thrust out his hand. “The daktan. Give it to me.”

Chloe’s eyes narrowed curiously, but she dug out the little flower without a word, dropping it into Horace’s hand. It felt clammy, slightly electric—revolting and dismal. He spun back to Mr. Meister’s desk and laid down the Fel’Daera, twisting the lid open with his free hand.

“What are you doing?” the old man said, his great left eye shining behind the oraculum.

Horace dropped the daktan into the open box. It clattered tinnily against the blue bottom. “You say the Keeper of the daktan is on his way here. You say he’s following the call of this missing piece. Well, I can fix that.”

“Horace—” Chloe began, but he cut her off.

“Everyone wants me to be the Keeper of the Fel’Daera. Fine. That’s what I’m being.”

He looked Mr. Meister straight in the eye, and then he flicked the box closed. He felt a shivery tingle roll through his hands, and it was done. The daktan was gone. It would be nowhere on this earth until it reappeared in this exact location in twenty-four hours. Let the lost Keeper try to track it down now.

The old man took off his glasses and squinted at Horace, as if barely recognizing him. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Horace shrugged. He picked up the now-empty Fel’Daera and slid it into its pouch. “I told you,” he said. “I need more time.”