4

“Family members are free to choose their alignment,” Winston says. “If they want to be SubMerged, that’s fine. I wouldn’t have cared if Stefan chose that path, any more than it bothered me when Oki turned.”

“Who’s that?” I ask.

“A king in Topaz,” Winston says. “He was Merged for most of his life, but chose to switch. He was a good friend of mine, so I was disappointed, but it didn’t mean we had to stop being friends.”

“You stayed friends?” I snort.

“Why not?” Winston responds.

“The SubMerged are evil.”

He purses his lips. “Very few are truly evil. Most just believe in a demanding way of life. They can be brutal and harsh, but there aren’t a lot like Old Man Reap, or Orlan Stiletto and Argate Axe, or... Stefan.”

“Stefan was evil?” I whisper, my eyes widening.

Winston sighs. “I asked a fellow Lox to check some of the locks that I’d installed in the vines in Canadu, to ensure my work was up to scratch. The locks deterred the locksmith, which pleased me, until he said that Stefan couldn’t have much left to learn if I was allowing him to sign my locks.

“I went back and examined them all,” Winston says, “and found that Stefan had worked on several of them, adding his own levels. It was masterful work. In fact the locks had been so skilfully tampered with that I could no longer open them.”

“No way,” I gasp.

“At first that delighted me,” Winston says. “I took it for granted that Stefan had done this to surprise me. I thought he wanted to present himself to me as a master, before setting off on his own. I even wondered if he’d hidden his expertise because he enjoyed being my apprentice and didn’t want to leave me.”

Winston snorts at himself with contempt, then sighs again.

“Stefan’s mistake was that his work was too good. If I’d been able to open the locks, I’d have complimented him, and he could have carried on with the charade. But the new levels intrigued me. I kept picking at them, and while I beavered away, dark thoughts crossed my mind. It struck me that only Stefan could open them now. Also, the locks were only on vines that led to a pair of bedrooms. I started to ask myself if he might have chosen those particular vines on purpose.”

“Who slept in the rooms?” I ask.

“Merged royals,” Winston says softly. “I checked the vines to the rooms where the SubMerged royals slept, but Stefan hadn’t altered any of the locks on those. I was deeply disturbed, but didn’t want to believe that the boy who was all but a son to me was planning to harm his fellow royals. So I made the worst mistake of my life and confronted him. Being a clever boy, he’d planned for that eventuality. While I was talking, he slyly removed a lock from a pocket. When he picked it, a snap borehole opened and we wound up in Ruby, where King Adil’s soldiers were waiting for me.”

Winston’s fingers creep to his cheeks and shake as he runs them across the scars. I expect a long silence, maybe more tears, but he presses ahead without pausing, his eyes taking on a stony, detached glint. It’s almost as if he’s describing something that happened to another person.

“Stefan had teamed up with Adil long before he became my apprentice. They were both admirers of Old Man Reap and were introduced through one of his officers who hadn’t ended up in the Lost Zone. They got along fabulously, and when Adil saw the young prince’s potential, he told him about a pet project of his. Stefan was intrigued and instantly got on board with the plan.”

“What plan?” I ask.

“They wanted to bring back Old Man Reap,” Winston says grimly.

“But that’s impossible,” I gasp. “You said there’s no escape from the Lost Zone.”

“To date there hasn’t been,” Winston says, “but Adil hoped to open a borehole from the Lost Zone back to the Merge. I’m not sure how – they kept that information to themselves – but Stefan became a key colleague. His raw talent took him a long way, but when it became clear that he needed assistance, they sent him back to the Merged realms, to hook up with someone who could help him develop.”

“They sent him to you,” I moan, and Winston nods robotically.

“This all came out during the course of my torture,” he says. “Stefan took part, and delighted in telling me how he’d played me.”

“I don’t understand,” I frown. “Why were they torturing you?”

“Stefan had overtaken me in certain areas,” Winston says, “but I was still a more skilled locksmith than him, with experience that he lacked. They hoped to make use of me, to break my spirit and bend me to their will.”

“But that’s crazy,” I mutter. “There’s no way you’d have helped them.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Winston says. “We all have our breaking points. If you put a man through enough pain... twist him the right way... burn away all that makes him who he is...” Winston strokes his scars again and gulps. “It wasn’t a matter of if I succumbed to their cruelty, but when. Then, if I proved to be the missing link, I’d have helped bring back the most dangerous tyrant the Merge has ever known, freeing him to wreak havoc again. That would have been some legacy, huh?”

Winston sneers as he says that, and my heart almost breaks for him.

“How did you escape?” I ask.

“A friend rescued me,” Winston says. “A queen assembled a squad, managed to pinpoint my location, and slipped into Ruby when Adil and most of his troops were absent. They healed my wounds when we got back, but I asked them to leave some of the scars to remind me. The queen wanted me to work with her to punish Adil, but I was weary and in pain. I looked for a new, isolated home, eventually wound up in this wrap zone, and cut myself off from the spheres. Needless to say, I didn’t take on any more apprentices after that.” He smiles. “Until you came along.”

“And Stefan?” I ask. “Is he still working with Adil to free Old Man Reap?”

Winston’s smile disappears and he whispers, “No.” He looks at the landmarks in the distance. “Stefan was present when I was rescued. He fled. I chased him.”

Winston stops.

“I caught him,” Winston says, and stops again.

“Did you...?” I can’t complete the sentence.

“I did what a famous poet once said each man does to the thing he loves,” Winston says, and when I stare at him blankly, he puts his hands over his head, buries his face between his knees, and groans, “I killed him.”