I sat very still, not even daring to lean over to pick it up. Instead, I inched my foot forward over the key.
Joyce Kimani was sitting at the table directly to my right, her Kenyan Snake Falcon, Njamba, dozing on her shoulder. Joyce was fifteen (like Zander), the daughter of a sea captain from Mombasa, Kenya, and one of the best Explorers in Training at the Academy. I knew she hadn’t asked to be placed on Lazlo’s challenge team, and I was pretty sure she disliked him as much as we did. At the table next to her were a couple of boys M.K.’s age. They were drawing pictures of naked ladies in their notebooks and giggling. I was pretty sure they weren’t watching me.
Casually, keeping my eye on Joyce, I reached down and slid the key out from under my shoe.
“Hey, Kit.”
I sat up suddenly, clutching the key, and found Kemal Asker standing in front of me. Kemal was my age, a tall, quiet boy who was in most of my classes. His family was from Ottomanland—the country on the Simerian border that some people called Turkey—and they had fled the Indorustan Empire a couple of years ago. His father had been some kind of adviser to the Emperor, but he had gotten into trouble for speaking out about corruption at the Emperor’s palace. Now his dad worked for our government, advising them on the Indorustans. I had the sense that the other kids at the Academy didn’t quite trust Kemal.
“Oh, hi,” I said quickly, conscious of my closed fist, the awkward angle of my foot. “What’s up?”
“Uh, I was just wondering whether you know which chapters we’re supposed to read for History of Exploration tonight.” His accent was pretty strong, and he seemed self-conscious about it. He often looked down at the ground when he spoke, his eyes hidden behind his dark bangs, and he didn’t seem to like being called on in class.
“Oh. Five, six, and seven,” I told him, my voice too high.
His eyes narrowed. “Okay. Thanks.”
When he was gone, I got up and went down to the boys’ bathroom, holding my breath as I passed two agents in black uniforms, red BNDL patches on their jackets. They were always patrolling the library, on the lookout for someone stealing a book or putting one back on the wrong shelf. I waited until I was safely locked in a stall to look at the silver key.
It wasn’t more than three inches long, designed simply, with a solid oval head, and decorated with little star-shaped flowers. I didn’t know if it fit a door or a padlock or something else, but I felt certain that Dad had left it for me. I tucked the key into the new hidden pocket M.K. had sewn into the collar of my vest, got my things together, and went out into the night.
“A key?” Sukey repeated. “A key to what?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? That’s what I can’t figure out. It has these little flowers carved into it, but no writing or anything.”
It was late afternoon and we were walking down to the Academy gates to meet Raleigh’s taxi. Most of the agents were up at the Longhouse, getting ready for the Kickoff Dinner, and it was a relief not to have to whisper for once.
“There’s Dad’s old locker up at the Mountaineering Hut,” Zander said. “The one that he scratched his initials on. But it doesn’t have a lock.”
I had given the key to M.K. to look at, and she examined it carefully with the little magnifying glass utility from her vest.
“I already checked with my spyglass, and there isn’t anything written on it,” I told her.
“I think it must be for a door,” she said, handing it back to me. “It’s small, but it looks like a deadbolt key. I can’t tell anything more than that. I don’t know what these little flowers are supposed to mean.”
I looked at it again before putting it away in the hidden collar pocket of my Explorer’s vest. Dad had customized the vests for Zander, Sukey, and me, and mine had come with a hidden map pocket on the back panel. But ever since government agents had discovered the pocket, I didn’t trust it anymore. M.K. had helped me construct a new one, accessed through the collar of my vest, where I was also keeping the map of Girafalco’s Trench.
Sukey had been silent, but now she said, “You don’t think it’s a little—I don’t know—strange, do you? That he would leave it in the book like that?”
“But the book is here. Somehow, he knew that we’d be here at the Academy, and he put the key in the book about Gianni Girafalco. A book written by Mr. Mountmorris.”
“If it was him,” Sukey reminded me. “You don’t know that it was. Maybe someone just left it there. Another student.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But if so, it’s kind of a crazy coincidence.”
“And what did he leave us, exactly?” Zander asked. “I don’t understand what you think you’re going to find.” He reached out and brushed a bit of grass off Sukey’s jacket, prompting her to smile.
“Zander,” I said. “Don’t you get it? There’s another map somewhere. The map to Girafalco’s Trench was just a clue to lead us to the one that actually tells us where to go.”
He was silent for a long moment. “Do you think he’s trying to tell us where he is? Do you think he’s trying to tell us where to find him?”
M.K.’s eyes were wide. “You still think he’s alive, Zander, don’t you?”
“All I know is that it’s really strange that he’s supposed to be dead, and yet he’s leaving us maps all the time.”
“Kit, what do you think?” Sukey asked, her eyes focused intently on me.
“I don’t know. I wish it was—I wish I could believe he’s still alive. You know I don’t believe what BNDL told us about where he disappeared, but I think it’s about something else. I think he’s trying to lead us to another place. I just don’t understand why.”
“Why don’t we ask Raleigh?” M.K. said. “He might know if there’s somewhere Dad would have had a key to. He might even recognize it.”
“I thought we said we weren’t going to get him involved,” I said.
“We don’t have to tell him about the key,” Zander said. “We can just ask if there were any places that he and Dad used to go. I’ll do it really casually. You’ll see.”
“Look!” M.K. shouted all of a sudden, as we heard the chugchug of a gleaming chrome-and-brass SteamTaxi making its way up the mountain road. “There’s Raleigh!”
Raleigh! Pucci shrieked. Raleigh!
We watched Raleigh clank out of the taxi on his prosthetic IronLegs, his messy brown hair and gray beard even longer than when we’d said goodbye to him in September. I didn’t realize until that moment how much I’d missed him.
“All right,” he said once he’d wrapped us all up in an enormous hug, surrounding us with the familiar clovey scent of Dramleaf and wood smoke. “Let’s get up to the Longhouse. I’m not going to miss a chance to have a meal on BNDL’s dime.”
