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I spend the next few nights, after training all day with Baba Jen and the team, locked away in the room, experimenting with locks and having a ball.
A lot of these haven’t been opened in recent centuries. I can swiftly spot those which have been cracked by Ena or other locksmiths. They have a certain shine, as clear to me as a faint watermark on a stamp would be to a philatelist. I ignore those, preferring to concentrate on the locks that have yet to be mastered, and drift around from one to another, choosing them at random.
Most of the locks resist my advances, but the failures don’t frustrate me. I love the alien feel of the forgotten locks, some of which seem to hail from a completely separate universe.
It almost disappoints me when I make headway every so often and a lock clicks open. I never step through, only close it again, leaving the lock for someone else to pick in the future.
I’m having so much fun that the sessions begin to blur, so I’m not sure if it’s the fourth or fifth night when I stumble across a lock that makes me forget all of the others. All I know for certain is that when I see it, everything stops, and I stare at it, transfixed, for a long, breathless time.
The lock’s in the centre of an otherwise ordinary-looking rectangular panel that was leaning against a wall, part of a stack. I’d been tipping them forward one at a time, idly glancing at the locks, none of which excited me. I was on the verge of moving to another stack when I tilted a green panel forward, revealing a dark maroon panel behind it, and that lock.
It’s shaped to look like a woman’s stretched face. Her eyes are open and her lips are closed. Her nose is flat, the nostrils just tiny holes above her upper lip. And at the sides of her head, only the outlines of her ears poke through.
It’s the same lock as the one in Seven Dials.
My spine’s tingling and my heart’s beating so hard that my head thrums with the sound. I doubt I’d hear anyone if they stepped up behind me. I probably wouldn’t even notice if the roof collapsed.
I stand frozen for ages, remembering that day when Orlan and Argate interrupted my work. If I hadn’t been so focused on the lock, they might never have found me in that city of millions. But my burning desire to unlock it brought me back to the same spot day after day, narrowing the odds in their favour. And what goes through my mind now is — if the lock got me into that much trouble in the Born, maybe it will land me in even worse trouble in the Merge.
I should walk away from it, let the other panels fall back into place, leave this room and never return.
But I’m a locksmith. Turning my back on an enigma isn’t in my DNA. So, with a sigh, I move the panels aside, kneel in front of the one with the face and murmur, “We meet again, old friend.”
As eager as I am to resume our duel, I can’t start until I lay my hands on a pick, having thrown my last one away when I made my break from Seven Dials. I do a quick scout of the room, in case any of the other Loxes left one behind. When that proves fruitless, I hurry out and down the nearest staircase, taking the steps a few at a time, planning to hit the streets and find a locksmith’s.
I’m halfway to the ground before I calm down and slow to a safer walking pace. There’s no need to rush. The panel has sat there undisturbed for decades or longer, so it’s not going to suddenly sprout legs and run away. Besides, I’ve nothing to trade for a pick.
I force myself to breathe calmly and think straight. Ena will be able to help me, and not just with a pick. The lock in Seven Dials had been damaged, and parts needed to be replaced or repaired. Even though I haven’t looked into this one, I’ve a feeling it’s in a similar sorry state.
I’d made up a list of parts that I was going to get from Winston’s. That list is still clear in my head and I mentally tick off the items on my way to find Ena, adding a few more picks, levers and solder to the mix, just to be safe.
A guard on the front gate directs me towards Ena’s workshop, which is a short stroll from Canadu. She’s resting outside when I get there, chatting with friends, and tells me to go in and help myself to whatever I like. I thank her, gather what I need, then head back, pausing along the way to pick some mushrooms, as I’ve a feeling it’s going to be a long night.
I search for Dragoslav and Havel in Canadu. Dragoslav isn’t working, but Havel is on duty, and I ask if one of them could check that I’ve turned up for breakfast in the morning, and every morning following, and to look for me in the room of panels if I haven’t — without a mobile phone, I can’t set an alarm to disturb me. It probably won’t be an issue – I never got lost in the lock in Seven Dials – but there’s no point taking any unnecessary risks.
Then, having gobbled a few of the mushrooms that I picked, I return to the room, close the door behind me, head for the panel and set to work. Wasting no time, I quickly reveal the ears and get to the point I was at in Seven Dials, then press on, moving further into the murky canals of the pair of locks. I make good progress over the next few hours, identifying areas where I need to make repairs, and finding ways to avoid sections where the damage is more substantial.
At one point the levers and pins start to tingle. It’s a gentle sensation, one I’d noted a few times before, when I was wrestling with the lock in Seven Dials. It’s as if something within the system – the world’s tiniest woodpecker, perhaps – has started tapping, and the vibrations softly run through all the different pieces of the lock. I’m not sure why this happens, but it never lasts very long. It unnerved me the first time, and I stopped working until the lock had returned to normal, but now I push on without pausing, and barely even notice when the tingling stops again.
It’s late and I’m tired, so I call it a night, return to my bedroom and undress. My school uniform dissolved after a few hours on my first night here, when I took it off to go to bed – Born clothes don’t last long in the Merge once they’re separated from their wearer – so I’ve been wearing Merged gear since, red trousers and a green tunic which Inez chose for me. She was also going to give me a green pair of shoes, but I drew the line at that, and asked for brown boots instead.
I feel certain that I’ll lie in bed for hours, thinking about the lock, unable to fall asleep, but I actually drift off in a matter of minutes and sleep soundly.
Waking refreshed, I head for the dining room and a quick breakfast – I nod at Havel when he sticks his head in, but he doesn’t stop to chat – then crack on. I decide to start the day with some repairs. This is a new challenge, but I’ve worked on the cuckoo clocks in Winston’s, so I’ve an idea of how to begin. Settling on a section where several levers have been snapped, I rub a string of solder between my fingertips.
Nothing happens at first, but as I keep visualising what I want, the metal melts and becomes liquid. In the Born it would be hot, but things work differently in the Merge and it remains cool to the touch. With a happy grunt, I start sticking levers back together.
The hours slip by unnoticed, and apart from a few breaks to eat, I don’t look up until someone kicks the door of the room and bellows my name. Startled, I go open the door, and find a furious Baba Jen outside.
“Have you been here all this time playing with locks?” she roars.
“Jen...” I start.
“No one skips a session with me without the mother of all excuses,” she cuts me off.
“Jen...” I try again.
“You didn’t even bother to tell me you weren’t coming,” she yells.
“Jen,” I say calmly, feeling no fear of her here, since we’re on my turf, “shut up.”
She gawps at me.
“This is important,” I tell her.
“More important than grop?” she huffs.
“Is that so hard to believe?” I smile.
“You’re crazy,” Baba Jen says. “Nothing’s more important than grop.”
“Maybe not to you,” I laugh, “but I’m working on a lock and it’s...” I stop, unable to explain why I’m obsessed with it.
“Has this got anything to do with why you’ve joined my team?” she asks. “I know you’re up to some sort of skulduggery — you suck at nursing, and you’re not that interested in grop. If that’s why you can’t come, I’ll understand.”
I lick my lips, tempted to lie, but she’d see through it, and I don’t want to give her any extra reasons to be mad at me. “This isn’t related,” I admit. “It’s just a lock that I really, really need to work on.”
Baba Jen cackles. “You need to learn how to lie. Telling the truth is for suckers. But fair enough, I’ll leave you to your lock, and we’ll cover for you as best we can when we’re in Niffelheim, so you don’t look like a complete medical imbecile.”
With that she turns and exits, leaving me to the peace and quiet of the room, and the silent siren’s call of the mysterious lock.