A GUEST FROM OUTSIDE the Liberty. A guest from Greenglass House!
Emmett Syebuck smiled at her. “Hi, Marzana.” He was youngish—or younger than her parents, but then her parents were on the older side, anyway—bespectacled, and almost aggressively ordinary in appearance, which Marzana suspected was a look he cultivated. Emmett worked for Nagspeake’s customs department and at least occasionally went undercover, as he had during the visit to the inn on the hill below the Liberty where he and the Hakelbarends had first met.
Then Marzana’s excitement curdled to cold and leaden fear in her stomach. Emmett is a customs agent. She glanced instinctively at her mother, looking for clues as to whether this was a friendly visit or not: Was her mom’s face paler than usual? Were her dark-rimmed eyes harder? Was there warning in them?
The worry must’ve shown. Emmett’s smile faded and he held up a hand. “Everything’s fine. I’m not here in any official capacity. I came for your parents’ help, actually.”
“And we invited him to stay for dinner,” Mr. Hakelbarend added. “I was just about to take the roast out.”
“Weren’t you supposed to play chess with Aunt Marie tonight?” Marzana asked. There was no Aunt Marie, and none of the Hakelbarends played chess.
“No, that’s tomorrow night,” Marzana’s father replied with a wave of his right hand. No danger here. All is as it’s being represented. Don’t worry.
Marzana relaxed. “I’ll set the table.”
“I’ll help,” Mrs. Hakelbarend said.
Her husband nodded at a pale wooden cabinet on the wall behind his chair as he got to his feet. “Emmett, there are a few bottles of wine and a corkscrew on the sideboard here, unless you’d rather have soda or a beer.”
“Wine’s good.” The customs agent saluted. “I’m on it.”
Marzana followed her parents through a swinging door in the wall behind Emmett’s side of the table and into the kitchen. “Everything’s really all right?” she whispered.
“Really and truly,” her mother assured her as she opened a cabinet and took out a stack of plates. “His visit has nothing to do with me.”
“Then what’s he here for?”
“He hasn’t quite gotten to that part,” her father said. “I’ll admit, I’m curious. He called this afternoon to ask if he could come by, but he didn’t want to say anything over the phone.” Mr. Hakelbarend had been a customs agent himself, once upon a time. He pulled on a pair of oven mitts.
Marzana’s brain began firing off a whole new series of instinctive danger warnings. Her father could cook, but mostly he made easy stuff like spaghetti and tacos. Her mother was extremely adept at ordering out. Neither of them had made the roast he was about to take from the oven. “Dad,” Marzana blurted, “where’s—”
“Honora put it in before she went out to her bridge-club meeting. She left a note about when to take it out.” He pointed to a cork board on the wall where the note in question was tacked, although tacked felt like the wrong word for a note held in place by the curving blade of a paring knife shaped like a bird’s beak. The note said in a shaky, spidery hand: Roast out at four bells on the dot. On. The. DOT. The final “dot” was underlined three times.
“Dad, it says four bells,” Marzana said hastily. “Four bells is—” She did rapid calculations. “Six thirty.”
“I know.”
“But it’s not six thirty,” Marzana protested, edging away from him. Nothing good came from ignoring Honora’s instructions about dinner. Ever.
“It’s six twenty-seven,” Mr. Hakelbarend said easily. “Close enough.”
Marzana glanced at her mother and noticed that Mrs. Hakelbarend had backed away from her husband too. “Three minutes, Peter,” she said in a vaguely warning tone. “We can wait three minutes.”
“I’m telling you, she went to bridge club,” Mr. Hakelbarend said. He opened the oven door. Mrs. Hakelbarend hugged the plates in her arms to her chest. Her husband reached in. Marzana held her breath. He took out a steaming roasting pan.
The door to the walk-in pantry at the back end of the kitchen burst open, and a grizzled old woman, tall and thin, tattooed and knotty as spent rope and browned to the shade Marzana’s mother referred to as “old-sailor ocher,” all but fell out of it. She pointed a playing-card holder at Marzana’s father, brandishing it like some kind of exotic, fan-shaped weapon. “Did I not leave a perfectly clear set of exactly one instruction that says the roast comes out at four bells? Because I believe I left a perfectly clear set of exactly one instruction saying precisely that, and oh yes, there it is, I’m looking right at it, and there’s the clock, and it’s no sort of four bells yet, and nonetheless there’s you, sir, and may I please know what precisely you’re doing with that, as it’s not four bells and there’s a clock right there as says so?”
“Aha!” Mr. Hakelbarend dropped the roast on the stove, grabbed a spoon from a jar on the counter, and jabbed it right back at her. “I knew the wish to catch me out would overpower any actual need for human interaction you might still have in that warped old heart of yours. No bridge tonight after all, eh, Honora?”
“I most certainly do have bridge tonight,” Honora said with dignity. “But didn’t I just know someone here wasn’t going to mind my instructions? Because, begging your pardon”—she didn’t bother to sound like she cared much about the pardon—“someone doesn’t, generally.” She reached back with her empty hand and flung the pantry door open in triumph, revealing a folding card table and the three other members of her bridge club stuffed in between the shelves of provisions. As the Hakelbarends stared, Mrs. Macready reached up to help herself to some chips from a can on the shelf behind Miss Unwin. Mrs. Ileck steadied the electric camp lantern on the table.
“Hi, there, ladies,” Marzana’s mother said, waving her fingers over the plates.
“You’re having your bridge game in the pantry?” Mr. Hakelbarend asked slowly.
“And good thing, too!”
“Stand down, Honora,” Mrs. Hakelbarend said in an amused voice. “We have company.”
Honora jabbed the card holder at Mr. Hakelbarend again. “And see you put my good carving knife back where you got it, sir. Begging your pardon, but you’re always putting it in the wrong spot in the knife block.” Then she shuffled back into the pantry, pausing only to say to Marzana’s mother, “That’s a good man you’ve got there, ma’am,” before shutting herself and the three other ladies back in with the potatoes.
Marzana shook her head, grabbed a handful of silverware and napkins, and went back out into the dining room. “Everything all right?” Emmett asked cautiously as he pulled the cork from a bottle.
“Our housekeeper’s playing bridge in the closet,” Marzana said, arranging napkins, knives, and forks. Emmett had been sitting where she usually did, so she set herself a place across the table, next to her mother. “Just a Monday night.”
Emmett nodded like this made perfect sense. He set the bottle on the table and peered into the sideboard cabinet. “Are these glasses okay to use?”
“Sure.”
Her mother emerged next with the plates and a glass of water for Marzana; a few minutes later her father came out with the carved roast and a bowl of potatoes and carrots.
“Thanks for this,” Emmett said, pouring wine for himself and Marzana’s parents. “I didn’t really plan this trip well. It took longer to get through the warder’s office than I’d anticipated.”
Marzana’s mom nodded. “That’ll happen.”
“Georgie sends very breathless hellos, by the way,” Emmett added in a not-very-convincing casual tone as he handed the wine around and took his seat. “It’ll be a while before she gets over her awe of you.” Georgie, a thief by profession, was one of the few people in Nagspeake who knew that, on evenings when she wasn’t undertaking heists most people would assume to be impossible to pull off, the mysterious master thief known only as Cantlebone could usually be found at Hedgelock Court helping her daughter with math homework.
Mrs. Hakelbarend grinned. “I like that girl.”
Emmett grinned back. “So do I.”
“Have you spoken to Milo’s family since December?” Marzana asked a little impatiently, reaching for the bowl of vegetables.
“I saw them in January at Clem and Owen’s wedding. Not since, though. What about you? Thank you,” Emmett added, taking the proffered plate of roast from Marzana’s dad.
“We’ve been trying to schedule a time to go stay at the inn for a weekend, but it hasn’t worked out yet,” Marzana replied.
“I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. And school’s out here soon, isn’t it? It’s already out in the city proper.”
“In two weeks,” Marzana said, trying to rise above the unfairness of those extra fourteen days.
“That should make things easier.”
“We hope so,” Mrs. Hakelbarend said. Conversation lapsed into murmured thank-yous and clinks of silver on china as they passed plates around. Then Marzana’s mother cleared her throat. “So.”
“So,” Emmett repeated. “Shall I come out with it, or would you prefer to wait until after dinner?” Not particularly subtle code for How much should I say in front of Marzana?, she guessed. Marzana caught her father’s eye, and he winked consolingly at her. Conversations like this often left both of them out.
“Hard to say,” Mrs. Hakelbarend said. “You tell me. Is it appropriate dinner conversation?”
“All fairly aboveboard, actually,” Emmett told her. “Potentially awkward, but that’s the worst of it.”
“Awkward’s okay.” Marzana’s mom set down her cutlery and folded her hands. “Let’s have it.”
Marzana tried not to let her jaw drop right down into her food. This was different. Ordinarily whenever people showed up at Hedgelock Court for any sort of interesting conversations with her mother, her parents instantly invoked deniability and kicked Marzana right on out of the room.
“All right. Well, I need a favor. This isn’t technically my purview—it’s not a customs thing—but I have a detective friend who’s heading up a case, and he thinks the trail’s leading to the gates of the Liberty.”
“How, exactly, is the trail leading here?”
“He thinks his suspect has gone into hiding somewhere inside the walls.”
Mrs. Hakelbarend raised her shoulders. “Your friend should start extradition proceedings.”
Emmett gave her a Who are you kidding? kind of look. “The warder almost never approves extradition from the Liberty of Gammerbund.”
“No, that’s very true. But it’s the only advice I have.”
Emmett leaned back in his chair. “Interestingly, I suspect in this case, it would probably be granted. But my detective buddy would have to know who he was looking for. He has it narrowed down to three suspects, and there’s no way the warder will allow them all to be taken back to the city proper just for questioning.” He spread his hands. “Enter Emmett, stage right. My friend has no contacts here. I do.” He smiled. “Sort of.”
“And your friend knows this?” Marzana’s mom said in a flat, warning tone.
“No, of course not,” Emmett said quickly. “I mean, he doesn’t know anything specific. He’s desperate, and we’ve been friends since primary school. I convinced him to take a break for lunch this afternoon—he’d been working all night; I don’t think he’d eaten since breakfast yesterday—and he talked me through the case, hoping for a fresh perspective. I asked if I could reach out to some people and see what I could find out. Now,” he admitted, smiling a little apologetically, “he does know, obviously, that my job brings me into contact with, let’s say, a number of characters. But I didn’t offer any information as to where or to whom I was planning to go, and Thad trusts me, so he didn’t ask.”
“So what, exactly, is this favor you need?” Marzana’s mom inquired.
“I need your help figuring out which of the suspects is the guilty party, so my friend can present his case to the warder. And quickly. We don’t have a ton of time.”
“So you want me to . . . to what? To investigate citizens of the Liberty of Gammerbund on behalf of the Nagspeake Criminal Investigation Department?” Marzana’s mom swirled her wine in her glass. Her eyes were hard. “You know this isn’t done, right? Of course you do.”
“Yes, of course I do, but you haven’t heard what the crime is yet.”
“Unless it’s murder—”
“It’s kidnapping,” Emmett interrupted. “An eleven-year-old girl. Taken yesterday on her way home from camp.”
Silence fell over the table. Nobody looked at Marzana, but she felt the weight of the room settle on her, along with a whole unspoken speech Emmett was smart enough to know he didn’t have to actually verbalize. Eleven years old. Marzana’s not much older than that. Imagine it was Marzana, and you had to wait for some endless, arcane, intentionally obstructive bureaucracy to go through its creaky workings before the good guys could look for her properly. What would you do? What wouldn’t you do?
“I know it’s not done,” Emmett went on quietly. “But I also know it’s not that simple. It has been done. Not often, and not publicly, but now and then, when it’s merited. Something like it happened just ten years ago. The Liberty found a way, without compromising its sanctuary principles, to handle things when a truly dangerous person tried to claim asylum.”
Now that silent weight in the room seemed to shift from Marzana to Mr. Hakelbarend. “Ten years ago it was a murder case,” Marzana’s father said at last. “But I suspect I would have done the same thing if it had been a kidnapping.”
Emmett nodded. “This guy took a kid. He weighs his weight. The whole forty and more.”
“No question.” Marzana’s mom frowned. “But you know I’m not a detective, Emmett. Neither of us is.”
He shrugged. “You’re what I have. And you have connections. A network.”
Mrs. Hakelbarend sighed. “All right. Tell us what you know.”