| |
Aaron insisted on one more briefing with Caleb before they left. It was crucial he convince Demetra because they would both be in immense danger inside her chambers if she suspected anything at all. The thought had them both on edge. So much so that several times Aaron waved Caleb to silence to peer out into the gardens, suspecting he heard something.
After the third time, Caleb asked, “Do you really think someone is out there? Could we have been discovered?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing. I guess I’m a bit on edge,” Aaron admitted.
“You weren’t like this when Alice touched Alexandre. Are you afraid we can’t pull this off? I can’t pull this off?”
“This is all unknown territory. It’s a huge risk we’re taking, but I will do my best to protect you.”
“But not when I’m home. You can’t help me then. So if I fail...”
“Don’t talk like that...”
“If I fail, would you do something for me please? Would you have one of the others tell my family I love them and I want them to live their lives to the full...” He trailed off, frowning. “That sounds so...so cheesy. Can I write a letter for someone to deliver?”
“Alright. If you hurry. We should leave soon.”
When Caleb had finished his letter to his family, it was a solemn goodbye. Alice tried to lighten the mood by saying pointedly, “Actually, we’ll see you soon — when you get back.” Caleb’s smile in return was weak, preoccupied as he was with what he was about to face.
They only made it a block before Aaron said quietly, “We’re being followed. Don’t look around, just keep walking.” He had his phone out. Caleb listened as the priest whispered rapidly into it, “Karim, we’ve been compromised. Someone’s tracking us. You need to follow them...” A pause then, “We’re heading west on Suqa Street. I don’t think he knows I’ve spotted him...he’s in a dark blue shirt, dark hair, tall, green bag. Hurry! Bring Noah...” Another pause, then, “Get the girls to find ropes, you might need to take him back there to question...hurry!”
“What if he tries to stop us?” Caleb asked when Aaron hung up.
“I’ll deal with him. Stop here, we’ll go into this shop to buy Karim time.”
It was a food shop. Aaron chose a few items while Caleb fought the urge to look out the window for their pursuer.
Noah and Karim found the man easily enough. He was leaning against a fence, eyes fixed on a shop well down the block. When Aaron and Caleb emerged from it, the man took up the trail again and they in turn followed him. “How are we going to do this?” Noah murmured when Karim made no move to close the gap.
“There are too many people around at the moment. When there are less, we’ll use this,” Karim briefly showed him a small syringe. “It should knock him out long enough to get him back to the safe house. We’ll say he’s drunk or ill or something if we’re questioned by anyone.”
Up ahead the man was crossing a busy intersection. Worryingly, he appeared to be closing in on Aaron and Caleb. He was so focused on them he stepped in front of a car causing a near collision and a driver to honk noisily. He was backing away from them when he saw Karim and Noah. For long moments he stared at Karim then spun and ran. Wordlessly they took off after him.
Karim was surprisingly fast for such a big man. Noah had to push hard to keep up. They gained ground running down the main road while the man hit a large crowd of people and was forced to slow down. But this also proved their undoing for they soon lost sight of him. By the time they reached the spot where he had plunged into the masses he was long gone. They spent ten minutes frantically looking for him then gave up and headed back to the house, Karim calling Aaron to warn him on the way.
Despite Karim’s warning, Aaron and Caleb had no further sign of their pursuer.
Demetra was in a huge concrete bunker which had been turned into a medical facility — the best of its kind in Kainnan. They applied to enter at huge steel gates and Caleb played his part well, naming another medical facility in Zana as his regular place of practice, describing the treatment he would use with enough technical swagger to convince the woman in charge he knew what he was talking about. Thankfully she barely glanced at the papers they were using, which Aaron had admitted would not stand up to too much scrutiny.
They were led by a guard down concrete corridors towards the heart of the facility. After a long, silent walk he let them through a set of well-secured doors reminiscent of a bank vault. They were left there to make their own way to the end of that corridor and into a huge, cavernous room full of people.
Aaron had warned Caleb that Demetra was terrified of sickness, having seen one of her only friends die a slow, painful death from a virus when she was young. To handle her own sickness, she had followed the strange suggestion by one of her advisors, of having yellow glass skylights and green-tinged lights installed into every room she used so everyone looked as ill as her. The result was unnerving. Not only did everyone present have a sickly tinge to their skin however, they were all obviously as nervous as Caleb, reading obsessively over their notes, talking tensely amongst themselves, looking around constantly.
A portly woman doing the rounds with two huge bodyguards approached as they looked for empty seats. Caleb obligingly performed his script again for her. This time he was rewarded with a square piece of metal with a number engraved on it — 120. “Half an hour or so,” she told them. “We’re up to one hundred and two now.”
They waited quietly, finding a spot against a wall to observe the other medics coming and going. Every now and then a door at the far end of the room would open and a well-dressed woman would call the next number. Through the opening they could see a second door which would occasionally slide back to allow a glimpse into Demetra’s room, though she was never in sight.
As Aaron had instructed, they did not talk much for fear of Caleb giving himself away. Instead they waited silently, alone with their thoughts and observations. It was a surreal experience, sitting in a room of people aiming to cure the ruler who hated, imprisoned and murdered them. Caleb knew there was a huge reward at stake, yet surely freedom from her oppression would be a far better one?
Which made him wonder if anyone else was there to try to kill her too.
As the healers were called and their number approached, Caleb’s nervousness rose exponentially. It felt like he was about to be thrown to lions; sure to be exposed as a fraud. Even if he did succeed in fooling Demetra, he was terrified by what he would face back home now he knew the truth about his mother.
Yet there was nothing he could do but wait.
Aaron was lost in his own thoughts, trying to work out how their tracker had known to follow them, how he had found them. Who did the man work for? Who might he inform?
He was so engrossed in trying to identify who their pursuer could be, that when the main door opened again, he almost overlooked the two men carrying food into Demetra’s bedroom. But then the very man he was thinking of caught his eye. They stared at each other for a long moment then the man winked at Aaron and continued on into Demetra’s bedroom.
It took all Aaron’s self-control not to react. He remained still and outwardly calm while his mind raced. What was the man doing here, serving food? What did the wink mean? Did it mean the man was a friend not an enemy? Or were they about to be exposed the moment they walked through that door? Should he tell Caleb? Should they abort?
He still hadn’t decided what to do when their number was called. Instead he took a deep breath and entered Demetra’s room feeling like they were walking into an ambush.
The first thing that struck them was the massive array of medicines and medical equipment present. They covered every bench, dresser and table-top in sight and filled an entire wall of shelving. There were vials and potions of every color imaginable alongside creams, boxes, syringes, eyedroppers and tubes. There was also a huge stack of what Caleb assumed to be instruction manuals and booklets teetering in one corner.
The room itself was huge — close to the size of the room they had waited in — and there were at least two dozen people in it. Most were sitting on chairs scattered around the room-edges. Some were watching them while others appeared completely disinterested. A few sat near the giant bed right in the center of the room.
In the middle of it all was Demetra, the one they were there to kill. She lay in the huge four-poster bed looking half-dead already. She was beautiful but far too thin with long fine black hair. Though she looked as if she was normally tanned, whatever was wrong with her had drained the color from her face leaving her pale and limp. She was barely able to lift her head from her pillows, although her eyes were sharp and focused as she waved them closer.
“What do you offer me?” she asked immediately. Her voice was clear and strong, belying her illness.
“Your Majesty,” Caleb began on his script, “I am a mesmerist in the tradition of my fathers and forefathers. For many years, we have tracked and recorded the influence of Serenita’s gravity on the body’s fluids. I believe your body is suffering because it is too closely connected with the phases of Serenita — because you are too in tune with the changes of the lunar season.” As rehearsed, he took a step closer, half-expecting the denouncement to come at any second. But although one of Demetra’s men straightened up imperceptibly, no one else paid attention.
Aaron had promised several things. First, unless Demetra had been warned about the manner of Alexandre’s death, she was surrounded by so many guards and in so much denial about her own mortality, it would never occur to her that Caleb could be dangerous. Second, although Demetra would be surrounded by people ostensibly there to protect her, there would actually be no love lost for her amongst her guards. Barely a man, woman or child in Cereise would have escaped her wrath — the death or imprisonment of a loved one at her hands. They served her out of fear, not loyalty. Their concern for her well-being would not run deep. Finally, Caleb’s claim would fascinate her. It would play to her vanity; her belief that she had a special power as queen to connect with the external world.
Yet, despite all Aaron’s reassurances, as Caleb recited his well-memorized lines, he was anticipating exposure at any moment.
“How is it affecting me? What is it doing to my body?” Demetra was asking.
“Tracking alongside the white blood cells in your body is a thin strand of magnetic fluid which is sensitive to the phases of Serenita. It is this which can slowly poison you. It’s harmless in small amounts and in fact, everyone has a little of it, but certain people develop increased levels of it. This has been the lifework of my father — to understand who is most affected and how. So far he has determined that high intelligence and diet are both factors. This has assisted us in the process of developing a cure...”
“A cure?” He could hear the curiosity in Demetra’s voice now. She was trying to sit up against her pillows but no one moved to help her. The strain on her arms was making her veins pop out, spider-web blue against her pale skin.
“We have developed special magnets,” he nodded at Aaron, who approached with his eyes submissively focused on the floor, handing him the small bag they had brought with them. Caleb drew the two tiny magnets out gently as if they were fragile and extremely precious. “When I position these correctly on your body,” he continued, taking another step closer so he was almost within touching range, “I will be able to counteract the effect of Serenita’s gravitational pull, which is causing the fluid to gather in certain parts of your body and thicken, particularly around your brain. This in turn is affecting your internal organs — heart, liver, lungs and bowels. I will use the magnets to draw the magnetic fluid to safer parts of your body where it can begin to disperse. Within a fairly short time we should be able to restore your body back to healthy levels.”
“Completely healthy?” she asked. She had managed to get herself partly upright, almost sitting, leaning against the oversized green velvet headboard behind her. She was looking at him as if she would read his mind. Caleb thought briefly that if he could pull off these lies, he could pull off any lies.
“Yes, completely healthy,” he replied firmly, holding her gaze. “In fact, if I can get the positioning just right your energy levels will be better than they have ever been.”
“What would you do?”
“I would start at the base of your neck because we need to first draw the fluid from your brain. It takes around five minutes to draw it down...”
“Did you bring proof that what you say is true?” she demanded.
Caleb shrugged. “Yes, Your Majesty, I have. But the proof will be in the cure,” he added nonchalantly, hoping she would believe his bluff and not examine the forged papers.
He waited, outwardly calm, inwardly full of adrenaline as Demetra held his eyes for several minutes searching hard for any sign of deception in them. He kept his eyes guileless, face blank, with all his might. It must have been sufficient because she eventually murmured, “Very well, prove it to me.”
He nodded once, took another step forward, positioning the magnets in one hand. Then he reached down and touched her. Instantly, everything went dark...and he was home.
