THURSDAY DRAGGED, to an impossible degree. Neither Marzana nor Nialla had any classes with Emilia until Marzana’s language arts class near the end of the day. They could have met up during the free study-hall period again, but they hadn’t arranged it in advance, and Emilia was curiously absent from both the hallways and the dining hall.
Marzana and Nialla fidgeted study hall away from their usual spot in the Parlor, skipping the sofa itself in favor of the floor between it and the window. Marzana sat cross-legged, attempting to tie a grief knot in her pink shoelace. Honora’s demonstration the night before had been too rapid to follow, but Marymead’s Library had two books on knots. One of them lay open in her lap.
“You don’t think she got caught, do you?” Nialla asked quietly from the floor by the window, where she had been staring down into the courtyard. Marzana suspected she knew what had been going through her friend’s head. We were down there. Under there. There’s a whole world under there.
“I mean, even if she got caught, she’d still be in class, wouldn’t she?”
“No idea.”
They sat in silence for a moment. “How’s your graphic novel lead going?” Marzana asked at last, pulling the loose ends of the twisted grief knot she’d tied and watching it fall neatly apart.
Nialla made a face. “Can’t really do much until I have the ransom-note copy. So far, all I’ve done is log all the occurrences in the book of the words in the note. But the good news is, every issue is hand-lettered, so I should be able to figure out exactly where each word came from.”
“I started reading the first one yesterday,” Marzana said, looping the lace left-over-right, right-over-left, into a reef knot. “And I think maybe I have a name.”
“A name?” Nialla repeated, confused.
“Yeah. You know. A name for us.”
“Oooh, really?” Nialla perked up. “What is it?”
Marzana grinned. “Saving it for when we meet.”
Nialla pouted, but only for show. “Fair enough.”
Mrs. Ileck flung open the door and rang the old bell. The girls gathered their bags and headed up the stairs to algebra. Still no Emilia—this was another time when they sometimes caught sight of her in the halls. Today, though: no go.
Mr. Otterwill was there again, writing a problem set on the board, apparently having moved on from Mrs. Agravin’s busywork. “Any ideas?” Nialla whispered as they took their seats. “I just know there’s stuff he could tell us.”
Marzana shook her head slowly. “We have to figure something out by tomorrow. If we’re going to do any good at all, we have to do it this weekend. The payment’s due on Sunday. Things change then.”
Nialla shuddered. “I hate to think what you mean by that.”
“Me too.”
After algebra was language arts, and still Emilia didn’t show. “Should one of us try to go up and see her?” Nialla asked when they rendezvoused to walk home.
“I should have offered to take homework to her,” Marzana muttered. “I bet there’s some way the teachers send it up anyway, though.”
“Do you think if we just went up there, anyone would turn us away?”
“No idea.” Marzana considered. “But I have a feeling Emilia knows what she’s doing. Somehow I think if she’s not putting in an appearance today, it’s because she doesn’t want to be seen. I’m inclined to give her space.”
“If you say so,” Nialla said doubtfully. Marzana frowned a little, wondering if Nialla thought she was just being timid. But Nialla caught the look and waved one hand. “I’m sure you’re right. No big deal. Listen, I’m going to go straight home by the shortcut and finish logging words. That way, assuming Ciro can still get to me tonight with the copy, I can start on the real work.”
“Which is what?” Marzana asked as they walked down the stairs.
Nialla gave her an enigmatic smile. “Saving it for when we meet. Turnabout is fair play.” She waved and headed for an alley to the south. It was a more direct route home for her, but it meant Marzana had to walk the whole way back to the Viaduct alone. Which wasn’t a bad thing, really. She still had to figure out how she was going to introduce Ciro to her parents.
He was waiting when she got to the west stairs, leaning against one of the stone balusters and eating a shave ice from a vendor who kept a stall on one of the lower risers. “Hey,” he said as she walked up. “This stuff is amazing. Currant-mint. Have you had this?”
Marzana frowned. “Of course. I walk past it every day.”
He slurped the last bit of melt from the cup and tossed it in a trash can. “If I walked by here every day, I’d eat this stuff fourteen times a week.”
She had no reply ready, so she just nodded. “Sure. This way.”
They walked up together, passing through the tables and chairs of the restaurants that had their outdoor café seating to either side on the wide stairs: first the wrought-iron tables of the High Teashop, and then through the green-checked tablecloths of the Updraft Café, and finally under the umbrellas of the Piper Gates Chophouse before they reached the green stones that paved Crossynge Lane. Marzana filled in Ciro on Emilia’s absence, but after that, neither of them spoke much. Too much silence. “I figured I’d just tell Mom and Dad we’re working on a project together,” Marzana said as they walked. “They don’t know every kid in my class this year. I don’t think they’ll ask too many questions. We’re doing plays in language arts. Maybe we could be planning a set.” She could tell she was speaking too fast. But then she was out of words, and that was worse.
Ciro didn’t seem to notice her awkwardness, but he didn’t seem to like the idea. “It’s an option.”
“Not a good one?” Her cheeks began to burn. “Well, you said plain old lying is one of your specialties. If you’ve got a better cover, I’m all ears.”
“I don’t have a better one.” Ciro flashed a reassuring smile. “It’s just that I think one of the keys to good lying is not to lie when you don’t have to. We could come up with an elaborate story, or we could make it so much easier. We can just tell your folks the truth: I live near Nialla, and that’s how we met: through her. No lies required.”
“So you’re saying I basically tell my mom and dad, ‘I met this boy and invited him over to hang out after school’?” Marzana asked, aghast. “Just like that? They’re going to assume that means I like you or something. I’m going to get so much crap for this.”
“Yeah, probably.” Ciro grinned. “Do you care?”
Kind of, yes, she did. Still. We all have to make sacrifices, she’d told J.J. “I guess not, but it’s going to be so awkward.”
“It was going to be awkward anyway. This conveniently explains that, too.”
Marzana sighed. “It’s the perfect cover.”
“Good.” Ciro looked around at the tall, overhanging houses that blocked any view of the city beyond. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually been up here before.”
“Well . . . welcome.”
They walked a little way in another uncomfortable silence. Uncomfortable to Marzana, anyhow, who spent the whole time trying to think of something to say, then discarding everything that came to mind as pointless. Ciro, she realized, didn’t seem bothered by the lack of conversation at all. He merely glanced this way and that, reaching out occasionally to touch a frond of some trailing plant.
“Oh,” Marzana said, as it suddenly occurred to her that there was something she needed to ask. “Did you manage to find any of your grandfather’s Belowground stuff?”
Ciro shook his head apologetically. “Nope. Or yes, sort of. Mom drafted me into a thing the second I walked in the door. She needed me to find a bunch of my old baby clothes for a shower she’s going to tonight, so while I was looking for them, I did a pretty thorough search of the attic. I know where Granddad’s stuff is; I just didn’t have a chance to look at it or even bring it down because Mom was in such a hurry for the baby stuff. But she’ll be out of the house tonight and I’ll have the whole place to myself. I should have everything you need by the time we meet on Friday.”
“Great.” She stopped in front of Hedgelock Court and rooted in her pocket for the key.
“Wow,” Ciro said, looking up at the tower that overhung the street. “This is . . . impressive. And weird.”
“It gets weirder,” Marzana said, opening the door and ushering him inside. She tossed her backpack on the floor of the foyer, then stopped. There were angry voices coming from the living room, but muffled in a way that happened only if you pulled the almost-never-used pocket doors closed. Marzana couldn’t quite make out the words, but the voice speaking right now was her mom’s, and the tone was unmistakably dangerous. She hesitated for only a moment, debating whether or not to announce their arrival, before a sharp cough—loud but fussy; that had to be Nick Larven—silenced her mother’s voice.
Nick Larven plus dangerous Mom tones meant there was someone else in that room too, and not just her father. Mr. Hakelbarend might well have been with them, but that voice was not one Barbara Hakelbarend used with anyone she liked. Which meant Nick had probably done exactly what she had sent him to do: he’d brought Rob Gandreider in for a little talk.
One of the doors scraped open, and Marzana’s mother stalked out into the hall. “Marzie,” she said grimly, “welcome home. Do me a favor and stay clear of the living room for a bit?”
“Erm. Sure.” Her mother’s eyes flicked over at Ciro. “Mom, this is—”
Mrs. Hakelbarend snapped her fingers. “You’re Katia del Olmo’s kid, aren’t you?”
So much for any subterfuge. “Yes, ma’am,” Ciro said. “I’m Ciro.”
Marzana stiffened. “Huh. Didn’t know you knew his mom.” Thank goodness they hadn’t tried to claim to be classmates. She prepared herself for any of the potential awkward follow-ups that had to be coming.
Fortunately, her mother had bigger fish to fry. Mrs. Hakelbarend glanced over her shoulder, back toward the living room. “Well, tell your mom I said hello. I have to get back. You guys need anything, Honora’s probably around somewhere.” She gave Marzana a look that spanned a whole spectrum of silent conversation. Chief among them were apology—although whether it was an apology for not being available to make snacks when a friend came over or an apology for the likelihood that it was going to get loud in the living room, Marzana couldn’t be sure—and warning, which was clear enough. Keep out of the way. That much Marzana didn’t have to be told aloud, anyway. Rob could be a nasty customer.
“Well,” Ciro said when they were alone again, “maybe this isn’t going to be as hard as we thought.”
At that moment, Honora appeared in the passage from the dining room. “Afternoon, miss. And sir,” she added, not blinking an eye at Ciro’s presence. She’d probably been listening just out of sight. “Just to say I’m in the kitchen if you need anything.”
“Thank you, Honora.” A sudden thud from the living room echoed down the hall. It sounded as if someone had slammed something—a book, say, or an uncooperative witness—onto the coffee table. “I think, under the circumstances, that we’ll go watch TV in the upstairs study,” Marzana said as they all pretended very carefully to have heard nothing at all.
“That seems a sound plan,” Honora agreed. “I’ll bring up some cookies, shall I?”
“If you please. This way, Ciro.” She started up the stairs, listening hard for any actual words emerging from the noises below.
Ciro followed. “Who’s the guest?” he asked under his breath.
“I have a pretty good idea,” Marzana whispered back as they reached the second floor. “The room we want’s right over the living room. We might be able to hear something.” She led him down the hall to the study. The whole way, she tried stringing silent sentences together. Without being able to say them out loud, though, it wasn’t very helpful. She thought back to J.J.’s effortless impromptu speeches and wished she had even a fraction of his confidence.
It was too much. Just inside the study doors, Marzana stopped short—so short, in fact, that Ciro nearly ran right into her. She blushed, and both of them took a step back. “What’s up?” Ciro asked, pretending fairly convincingly that nothing weird had happened.
“I’m really bad at small talk,” Marzana blurted.
Ciro tilted his head. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Because I haven’t made any small talk,” she pointed out.
“Did you think you had to?” Ciro asked curiously. “Why?”
Abruptly she realized that was a good question. “People seem to expect it,” Marzana said after giving it some thought.
Ciro frowned, considered, shrugged. “I don’t.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re thinking about the Pencil Speeches, aren’t you?”
“A little,” Marzana admitted.
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, J.J. can spout meaningless drivel on command. But it’s meaningless. That’s the point. You said it yourself: It’s patter. It’s a tool he has, and he’s good at it, but it’s as much illusion as any other magic he does. And,” he added, “much like making coins appear out of people’s ears, if he did it all the time, he’d be insufferable.”
That was probably true. Marzana tried to decide whether it made her feel any better and couldn’t quite make up her mind. Either way, standing here in the doorway was weird. “Okay.” She stood aside and waved an arm into the room.
Ciro bowed his head briefly and stepped past her into the study. “Say what you need to, or what you want to,” he said, glancing around the room. “You’re the boss. But you don’t have to make conversation on my account. Fair?”
His eyes came back to her on the Fair?, and Marzana couldn’t have explained why, but something about the moment was exactly like asking Nialla Did I do okay? and being told Yes. There was no good reason it should’ve worked, but somehow it did.
“Fair,” she said, and felt a weight fall away.
When Hedgelock Court had taken itself seriously as a stately house, this had been the library. About a third of the space occupied the lower half of the turret and projected out over the street. The rest of the study sat directly over the living room. In addition to having bookshelves set into several sections of the turret walls, it had a big walnut dining table that her parents used as a desk, a blocky chaise lounge and an overstuffed chair that faced the carved cabinet that hid the TV, and—most important—a fireplace that shared a chimney with the one in the room below where her parents were currently entertaining their guest. Marzana opened the doors of the media cabinet. She tossed Ciro the remote. “Find something, please.”
“Is the lady with the tats likely to throw cookies from a box on a plate, or bake them?” Ciro asked as he dropped onto the chaise and began pushing buttons. “How much time do we have? And is she going to feel like she has to chaperone?”
“She’ll bake them, but she keeps dough already made in the freezer,” Marzana said, kneeling and leaning carefully into the fireplace. There was no hearth here, just a massive, time-polished piece of sandstone set into the hardwood floor. “The dough will have to defrost a little and the oven’s got to preheat, so she can’t put them in right away. She’ll bring drinks and fruit or something up first to tide us over, so I’m guessing we have five minutes before that happens. Fifteen minutes after that, she’ll come up asking if we want refills. And fifteen minutes after that, we’ll get cookies, when they’re out and cooled just a bit.”
“Which answers my chaperone question, too.” Ciro paused on a classic movie channel, and a man calling himself Rufus T. Firefly began to sing about the wonderful changes he had planned for Freedonia now that he was president.
“Yup. Chaperoning at a distance. Not that she’d think of it that way. I don’t get up to much.” Marzana leaned back in, listening. The voices were faint, but she could make out actual words now. “Ciro, can you hear any of this from there?”
He paused for a moment, then shook his head. “Not over Groucho.”
“Groucho?” she repeated, preoccupied. If Ciro couldn’t hear the voices from downstairs from where he was sitting, then neither would Honora when she came in.
Ciro’s reply was wounded. “I can deal with no small talk, but please tell me you’ve heard of the Marx Brothers.”
“Of course I’ve heard of them. I’ve just never watched a whole movie.”
“Well, you’re in luck. This is the best one, and whatever noise comes up through the chimney will blend right into the craziness.”
Marzana nodded, satisfied. She dusted her hands off on her jeans and sat awkwardly in the big chair. “My mom recognized you. Do you . . . recognize her, or know how your mom knows her?”
“My mother . . . knows a lot of people,” Ciro began carefully. “Not all of them are real open about who they are or what they do. Mom doesn’t usually introduce us.”
“But I bet you don’t forget a face,” Marzana guessed.
“I don’t usually forget a face,” he admitted. “I think I’ve seen your mom, yes.” He kept his eyes on the Marx Brothers. “You said you couldn’t talk about her. I’m guessing you get the same speech I do about deniability. Is that . . . accurate?”
“Very. I hate deniability,” she added in a grumble.
“Yeah. But your mom’s working on this thing too, huh? That’s what you said yesterday.”
“Yes.” Marzana contemplated the boy sitting cross-legged on the chaise. When she’d told him and J.J. about the kidnapping, she’d framed it simply: This happened; my parents are investigating. She’d avoided saying much about Emmett and the fact that he’d asked them specifically to investigate suspects, because admitting that her own parents were working with authorities from the city proper was a dicey thing to do.
Still, Ciro had told the truth about his own family. The Spinster was a legend in the Liberty, but she’d been dead for centuries, so it made sense that he was comfortable talking about his connection to her, and she didn’t see any reason he couldn’t have told anybody about his dad and grandfather. But fessing up to his mother’s shenanigans . . . well, he’d trusted Marzana, Nialla, and Emilia (and J.J., though Marzana assumed that, as Ciro’s best friend, he already knew) with some pretty sensitive information there. Not everybody in the Liberty would understand what her parents were doing, even given the seriousness of the situation. But Ciro, she thought, probably would.
“An agent from down in the city asked for their help in tracking down a few suspects they thought might be involved in the kidnapping. I think Mom and Dad and one of Mom’s lieutenants have one of those suspects in the living room. I think it’s more or less an interrogation.” There was a creak in the hallway. Marzana clammed up fast, and a moment later—five minutes on the dot from the time she’d predicted it—Honora stalked in with a tray in hand.
“Cookies’ll be up in about a glass’s time,” she said. “Thought you’d like something in the meanwhile.” She set the tray down on the ottoman between the chaise and chair with a rattle of lemonade glasses and apple slices and stalked out again without another word to either of them, though Marzana thought she heard her mutter, “‘Hooray for Captain Spaulding,’” on her way out.
“Wrong movie,” Ciro said under his breath as he reached for one of the apple wedges on the tray. “This is Duck Soup. Captain Spaulding’s from Animal Crackers.”
“I had no idea Honora was a Marx Brothers fan.” Marzana got to her feet and tiptoed toward the door of the study. She heard the stairs protesting faintly at the far end of the hall as Honora stomped back down. “Okay. Let’s move. I’ll find the note; you listen and see if you can make out anything they’re saying.”
Ciro hurried over to the hearth. Marzana darted past the big table by the bow window, which was clean of papers and neat as a pin as always, and headed for a low cabinet full of various-sized drawers that stood against the wall opposite the fireplace. Her mother was too cautious to leave things out even in her own home—deniability always making life difficult—but she wasn’t totally paranoid. Some of the cabinet’s drawers were locked, but Marzana was willing to bet that since this particular case was a mostly legal enterprise, Mrs. Hakelbarend wouldn’t have gone too crazy with security. She wasn’t disappointed. She found Emmett’s folder tucked in the top flat file drawer within half a minute of looking: a thin, perfectly ordinary-looking manila folder with PH for BK&PH printed on the tab and a paper clip fastening something to the inside of the top cover.
“Ciro.” Marzana waved him over without touching the folder and pointed into the drawer. “Take a picture for me.”
“Nice instincts.” He took his phone from his back pocket, and Marzana watched with interest as he thumbed it on, turned on the camera, and documented the folder’s exact placement within the drawer from three angles. “Good?”
“Good.” Marzana lifted it out gently, carried it to the table, and opened the top cover with care, so as not to disturb the paper clip. There they were: the school photo and the color copies of the ransom note and envelope that Marzana had seen at the dining table, all tucked under the clip and facing a page covered with notes in both of her parents’ handwriting.
And then she heard herself make a small noise as she spotted a tiny drawing in the left-hand margin of the page. Her father’s work, no question—he was a doodler. Marzana could picture the scene: her mother pacing by the study window tossing out ideas, her father sitting at the long table making notes and sketching this quick shape during a thoughtful pause. As she looked down at the drawing—a bird with an abnormally long, snakelike neck—a word she’d heard on Monday but that she hadn’t thought of since came sharply back to her. Snakebird.
“What is it?” Ciro asked.
“Tell you later,” she said quietly. “Camera again, please.”
Only when she was satisfied Ciro had enough images that they’d be able to exactly replicate the arrangement of the papers did she slide the copies out from under the clip.
The words had been irregularly cut from their original pages and affixed to a piece of ordinary looseleaf paper with clear tape. The “1000000” and a couple of the longer words had been assembled letter by letter. Thanks to the distinctive comic-book lettering, it didn’t look serious. It looked like a prop from a movie that wasn’t planning to give the audience too close a look. It looked all wrong, like a letter containing deadly serious news that the sender had typed in a totally inappropriate font.
She set it on the table, and Ciro climbed up on a chair in order to get the best straight-down picture he could. Then he nodded at the rest of the papers in the folder. “Shall we . . . ?”
“Absolutely.” It didn’t take long to photograph the rest of the contents. There were three pages of her parents’ handwritten notes, a few pictures of a street that ran along a canal with a little towpath and a bridge, and two typed and stapled pages of notes that presumably Emmett had brought with him.
When Ciro was finished, he scrolled through the images and they carefully replaced everything, putting the paper clip precisely where it had been before and stacking each page exactly as it had been relative to both the folder and the page below it—or as close to exactly as they could manage. Then Marzana carried the folder to the drawer and placed it inside, and they double-checked the photos again to make sure it was positioned correctly. She closed the drawer, let out a deep breath, and glanced at Ciro, who was grinning like some kind of maniac.
“That was fun,” he admitted, shoving his phone in his pocket.
She smiled back. “Yeah, it was.” Marzana held out her hand and watched her fingers quiver. “My hands are shaking a little.”
He held out his own, palm down. “Mine too. So now what? Fireplace? I didn’t catch much before you found the folder.”
Marzana glanced at the clock. It had been eleven minutes since Honora had dropped off refreshments. A glass’s time, Honora had said, before the cookies would be done: thirty minutes. Maybe she could preempt another visit before then. Marzana went to the ottoman, got the two glasses of lemonade, and passed one to Ciro. “Here. Bottoms up. I’ll go for refills, and I bet then she doesn’t bother us again until the cookies are done.”
The two of them chugged their drinks. “So who am I going to be listening to?” Ciro asked in between gulps.
“My mom. Her associate, Nick. Possibly my dad. The guy they’re . . . talking to is Rob Gandreider, I think.” She paused to finish draining her own glass. “He’s a Libertyman, but he was in jail in the city proper until just recently. I’ll fill you in on the rest later.”
Ciro nodded as he drank, then handed over the empty glass and returned to the fireplace. Marzana left him there to eavesdrop while she headed down to the first floor.
The voices in the living room were much quieter than they had been. Marzana restrained herself from going over to press her ear against the closed door and followed the cinnamon-and-nutmeg smell of Honora’s snickerdoodles through the dining room to the kitchen.
The steward was sitting at the little breakfast table, sipping from a coffee cup with a battered copy of a book called How to Cook a Wolf clutched in her knobby, tattooed fingers. She looked up as Marzana entered and took in the empty glasses. “Thirsty, were you?”
Marzana shrugged. “It was good lemonade. There was an interesting flavor in there.”
Honora gave her a considering look, then harrumphed in a peculiar way that somehow managed to convey surprise and pride all while both looking and sounding completely dismissive. “Juniper,” she said. “In my day we spiked our lemonade with good strong Hollands, but since it’s frowned upon to feed gin to children in these heathen times, juniper syrup’s the best I can do.” She stalked to the freezer and added a few ice cubes to each glass, then pulled a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge and a hand-labeled bottle from a shelf. She poured a bit from each into the two glasses and stirred the concoctions briefly with the handle of a wooden spoon before presenting them to Marzana. “I’ll be up with the cookies in a bit.”
“Thank you, Honora.” Marzana took the glasses and forced herself to walk at a normal pace until she was out of the kitchen and through the dining room. Then she sprinted up the stairs and into the study.
Ciro glanced up and waved briefly from the fireplace, where he sat cross-legged, his face tight with concentration. Marzana deposited the glasses on the tray and hurried over to join him. Together they sat as the disembodied voices drifted up through the chimney.
“. . . not saying it’s impossible that you did.” That was Marzana’s father’s voice. “But I am saying that if you did, there’s no record of it.”
“I can’t help it if the blasted gatekeeper didn’t do his job.” Yes, that was definitely Rob Gandreider. He sounded surly but tired. “I wasn’t going to remind him, was I? I’d been arrested, if you recall. It was an escape, for the love of all that’s holy. And unless you’re planning on turning me in, I don’t see what it has to do with you. Of course, once a city cop, always a city cop.”
Marzana’s father laughed. “That’s rich, coming from a fellow who was actively moonlighting as a customs asset less than six months ago.”
“Once a city cop, always a city cop,” Rob repeated coldly. “Plenty said it when you turned up here.”
“And if I’d been there when they said it,” Mr. Hakelbarend retorted, unconcerned, “you’d have heard me say that they were welcome to come and say it to my face. But they, unlike you, were too smart to do that.” A moment’s pause, then Marzana’s father’s voice spoke again in a different tone. “Say it again, Rob. Say it right to my face.”
Silence. Rob wasn’t stupid.
“I would think that you would recognize the seriousness here,” Marzana’s mom said. “For kidnapping, the Liberty will extradite. They just will. The thing is, that takes time. The other thing that takes time is raising a ransom if you’re not rich, and the girl’s parents aren’t. So this isn’t likely to resolve itself quickly. I worry that if the girl isn’t found by the time an extradition happens, it won’t be extradition for kidnapping. It’ll be extradition for kidnapping and suspected murder. And if you haven’t cleared your name before then,” Mrs. Hakelbarend continued, “well, Rob, I’ll find you and hand you over myself. That is a promise, and I think you know I can keep it.”
Murder. “I never thought of that,” Marzana whispered. Somehow, though she’d recognized that things got much more serious if the ransom wasn’t paid on time, the idea that the kidnappers might just up and kill their captive outright had never occurred to her. “What are we doing sticking our noses into this?”
“Trying to help,” Ciro said quietly. “That’s what.”
“What on the bleeding earth made you think this was me?” Rob demanded in the room below. “You still haven’t explained that. Sent a damned bagman after me here—here! Not out there, but here, on our own home grounds!—and why? You say I’m a suspect, but let me ask you: Do you really think I’d go to all the trouble of breaking myself out of the city hoosegow just to turn around and commit a crime on city turf? What, did I just pick up a job on the way home? A kidnapping? Exactly how stupid do you think I am?”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Mrs. Hakelbarend said darkly. “And yeah, put like you just put it, you’d have to be stupid to do this. But not if it went down the other way around. Not if that door at the lockup that oh-so-conveniently got left open for you to saunter through got left open in exchange for your agreeing to play some part in the snatching of this girl. Every caper needs a good fidlam ben, after all.” The phrase fidlam ben wasn’t familiar, but the pause that followed it was. Marzana could perfectly picture her mother staring her prey down for dramatic effect. “So maybe we should start there. Who left the door open for you, Rob? How about you walk us through that?”
Another silence. Marzana hadn’t heard Nick speak yet, but she had no doubt he was there: quiet, menacing, ready. Her mother would be perched at the edge of whatever surface she was sitting on, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, her eyes hard and the rest of her face almost smiling—Marzana had seen her do that more than once, and it was unsettling as all get-out—her body totally still the way a predatory cat could be totally, almost invisibly still, right up until the minute it lunged. Her father would be standing close by, his arms loose and his hands in his pockets, looking relaxed but somehow also obviously ready in case Rob tried to make an unwise move.
“Who said anyone opened the door?” Rob replied at last, but some of the bravado had gone from his voice.
“Had it from a customs officer and a detective who were in pretty strong agreement on the matter,” Mr. Hakelbarend told him. “What, you saying you picked that lock? What kind of lock was it again? Nick?”
Nick Larven spoke for the first time, his voice managing to be both jolly and flint-edged. “That was the Hever Street Prison, wasn’t it? Not the worst accommodation you can get down in the city, that. Still, if memory serves, they installed new Ward’s locks late last year. Brand-new models, they are. Ward’s calls them Saturns, but all the gents I know who’ve . . . encountered them refer to them as Hellcats, as they knot up picks like a cat knots yarn. I managed to get my hands on one, in fact. Been working on it for two months, and I can’t so much as move a tumbler.” He laughed. “Here’s a deal for you. That lock’s in my Gladstone bag out in the hallway. What say I just run out and fetch it right now, and if you can show me how to pick a Hellcat, Rupert, I’ll quit my employment this minute and sign on for whatever job you’ve got lined up next.”
The wisp of sound, barely audible, that whisked up the flue might have been a sigh. “The man who opened the gate was a guard. His uniform patch said Flynn, but I never learned his first name. He said he suspected if I tried the door at a certain hour, I might find it was loose, provided I was willing to lie low for a couple weeks before I came back here. That’s all. Lie low, and not return to the Liberty until this past Sunday. It did occur to me that he might be setting me up, but I figured without bars between us, I could probably manage him if he tried to retake me. He didn’t, though. I never did figure out what the point of it all was, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“He was setting you up,” Mr. Hakelbarend said. “As a red herring. The kidnapping took place on Sunday, and according to our contact, your name was all over the discussions almost as soon as it happened. You were literally their first suspect.”
Rob swore, but the word was muffled. Marzana pictured him dropping to a seat with his face in his hands. “So now what? I’m telling you, this wasn’t me. Not in any way. On the honor of my warrant.” His Liberty warrant, he meant—the paper that proved he was a permanent citizen of Gammerbund. Marzana and Ciro glanced at each other. Nobody would lie against the honor of his or her warrant.
The adults apparently thought so too. “How about we start with you not disappearing when you leave this house?” Mrs. Hakelbarend said. “I’ll pass this to the investigators in the city and let them follow up. But you stay visible—to us, at least—in case we have any other questions. Don’t go off-grid. And you come straight back to me if you hear anything that suggests whoever took this girl has any connection to the Liberty other than you.”
“Stay visible?” Rob snorted. “If it’ll clear my name of suspicion in this thing, you tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” His tone turned sober. “I’ll put my ear to the ground, Babs. If I hear anything, it’s yours.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Now can I get an ice pack or something? I think this is going to bruise.”
“I’ll make you one to go,” Marzana’s father said. “Come on.”
The scraping that followed was the sound of the pocket doors opening. There was no further discussion. The interrogation was over.
Marzana got thoughtfully to her feet, returned to her chair, and reached for her lemonade. “That was interesting.” Ciro nodded as he followed. He took a wedge of apple, bit, and chewed. In the background, the Marx Brothers were oddly silent as Harpo pretended to be Groucho’s mirror image.
“We should write that down,” he said at last. “Before we forget.”
“Yeah. Be right back.” Marzana hurried to her room and grabbed her journal and pen. She paused in the hallway to listen for footsteps on the stairs, but there was nothing.
Back in the study, she and Ciro reconstructed as much of the conversation as they could. After that, on the assumption that Honora’s cookies had to be out of the oven by now, they settled back into their respective seats to at least pretend to watch Duck Soup.
Sure enough, Honora surfaced about five minutes later with a plate of warm snickerdoodles and two mugs of milk. “Enjoy, now,” she said, swapping them for the contents of the last tray.
Figuring it might look suspicious if she didn’t seem at all curious, Marzana followed Honora to the door. “Is everything okay?” she asked in an undertone.
“Things is calming down,” Honora said cautiously. “So to speak.” Her eyes flicked down to Marzana’s legs, then back up. “You might try and not get that on the furniture,” she commented with one eyebrow arched up high. Then she touched her knuckles to her forehead and took herself downstairs again.
Marzana glanced at her knees. A dusting of soot showed where she’d knelt to lean into the fireplace. “Shoot.” She sat and scrubbed at her pants with the hem of her T-shirt.
Ciro shook his head. “This doesn’t bode well, does it?”
Marzana flopped back with a groan. “Amateurs. We are such amateurs.” She looked down at her hands. “I better just go wash. And maybe get pants that won’t turn state’s evidence on me.”
Ciro reached for a cookie. “I’ll be here.”
After Marzana changed, they watched the end of the movie, figuring it would be weird if they didn’t. Then they headed downstairs, Marzana carrying the empty cookie plate and Ciro carrying the mugs. This time, voices were coming from the dining room, but it was just ordinary conversation. Or maybe not quite ordinary: the flow of talk stopped abruptly when they reached the dining room doorway. Her parents and Nick Larven were there. Of Rob Gandreider, there was no sign.
“Well, hi,” Marzana’s mother said brightly.
Mr. Larven got up and enfolded Marzana in a hug. “Hello, my dear. Lovely to see you.”
“Hi, Mr. Larven. Um, this is my friend Ciro.”
“I’ll take those.” Mrs. Hakelbarend took the plate and mugs. “Ciro is Katia del Olmo’s son,” she added on her way to the kitchen.
Both Mr. Larven and Marzana’s father made pleased faces. “Nice to meet you.” Marzana’s dad got up and reached across to shake Ciro’s hand. “Oh, of course.” He turned to Marzana’s mom as she returned. “Katia lives not far from the Giddises, doesn’t she?”
Ciro spoke up. “Just around the corner, sir.”
“Well, that explains that.” Mrs. Hakelbarend sat again. “Ciro, are you joining us for dinner? We’re having pasta. Nick’s staying too. Easy as pie to add another place.”
No way. Apart from how exponentially awkward this was going to get if they had to go on with this pretense much longer, Ciro had to get going if he was going to print all the pictures he’d taken, get the photo of the ransom note to Nialla, and raid his attic before his mother got home. Marzana felt stirrings of panic and embarrassment whirling together in the pit of her stomach as she tried to think of something to say to decline for him.
Ciro spoke up first. “Nope,” he said easily. “I have a project due tomorrow. But thank you.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Marzana said, hoping she didn’t sound too relieved.
Mrs. Hakelbarend made a disappointed face. “Another time, then. Hi to your mom.” Marzana’s dad gave a short wave, and Nick twirled his mustache in a melodrama-villain way that Marzana suspected he’d been practicing for years.
She all but dragged Ciro out into the hall. “They seem nice,” he managed, clearly trying not to laugh as he allowed himself to be hauled to the front door.
“Har, har.” Marzana opened it and shoved him out. “Tomorrow, then, at the bookstore?”
“Yeah. Same time, after school?”
“Yup. See you then.” She hesitated, then added, “Thank you. You know how to get home?” She pointed down Crossynge Street. “Straight that way until you get to the stairs.”
“Got it. Tell Honora I said ‘Hooray, hooray, hooray!’”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s from the song she was quoting earlier. Hooray for Captain Spaulding. Now, if you’ll pardon me.” He leaned back inside and reached past her to grab his bag. “I have some projects to finish.” He lowered his voice. “Want me to just give printouts of everything to Nialla tonight so she can give them to you first thing tomorrow?”
“Perfect.”
Ciro saluted, and she watched him until he had descended to the street. Then she shut the door, squared her shoulders, and steeled herself for a return to the dining room and certain humiliation.
Fortunately for her, conversation had returned to the interrogation, and with Ciro gone, this time her parents didn’t clam up quite as quickly. “So next we tell Emmett to look into this Flynn character,” Mr. Hakelbarend was saying, “and to find out from his detective buddy where the idea of Rob as a suspect originated.” He looked at his watch. “Maybe I’ll do that right now.” He got up and gave Marzana’s shoulder a squeeze as he passed her on his way to use the phone in the parlor.
Mrs. Hakelbarend looked at Nick. “You know I can pick a Hellcat, right?”
Nick made a face. “I was under the impression that if I followed the patent trail far enough, I’d find you invented the design.”
Marzana’s mother said nothing, merely shot Marzana a glance, then grinned into her wineglass. Marzana smiled weakly, wondering what the right response to that was, considering she hadn’t officially been party to the conversation they were referencing.
“Which is, of course, why it pains me to tell you I have managed to open mine no less than three times,” Nick continued apologetically.
“Out of how many tries?”
Nick sighed. “Regretfully, I’m not good with numbers.”
“You’re a doctor, Nick,” Mrs. Hakelbarend said drily. “Don’t doctors have to be able to count higher than three? For dosages or whatever?”
“It’s a paradox.” Nick winked at Marzana. “Strangely, I am good with paradoxes.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Marzana lied. “Are we eating soon?”
“Five minutes!” Honora barked from the kitchen.
“Five minutes it is,” Mrs. Hakelbarend called back. She stretched her arms over her head and exhaled. Her eyes fell on Marzana. “So,” she said casually. “Will we be seeing more of Ciro around here?”
“I claim sanctuary,” Marzana mumbled.
Honora bustled out of the kitchen with a basket of rolls. “He’s a Marx Brothers fan,” she said crisply. “Can’t say fairer than that.”
“And there you have it.” Marzana caught Honora’s eye. “By the way, he said to tell you ‘Hooray, hooray, hooray.’”
Honora made another of her harrumphing noises—surprised and pleased, this time—then plunked the basket down in front of Marzana, who, recognizing this for the distraction it was intended to be, grabbed a roll and studiously ignored everyone else in the room until the adults took the hint. Mr. Hakelbarend returned from his phone call just as Nick launched into a story about something absurd that had happened at the lab of one of his favorite chemists. Mrs. Hakelbarend raised both eyebrows. Marzana’s father nodded once and murmured, “At CID.” After this briefest of pauses, Nick continued his tale as if there had been no interruption at all.
Marzana let her mind wander as she tore her roll into halves, then quarters. The afternoon in the study had produced plenty of new information, but it was knots that she found occupying her thoughts. Out of nowhere, she remembered the dream from the night before: Honora braiding her hair with a marlinespike as the Liberty of Gammerbund, bound up in a decorative knot made of night and wind, swung like a pendulum.
Thief knot, grief knot, what knot.
I worry that if the girl isn’t found by the time an extradition happens, her mother had said to Rob, it won’t be extradition for kidnapping. It’ll be extradition for kidnapping and suspected murder.
Amateurs, Marzana had said to Ciro. We are such amateurs.
Her father didn’t mention the call he’d made again until the phone rang after they’d finished dinner, just as Honora arrived at the table with the coffeepot and another plate of snickerdoodles. “I’ll get it, Honora,” Mr. Hakelbarend said, rising and striding into the parlor before the old steward could object. He was gone only a few minutes.
Marzana kept her eyes on the cookies and pretended not to pay attention as Nick asked, “And so?”
“Well,” Mr. Hakelbarend said with a chuckle, “I actually got hold of Emmett at his CID friend Thad’s office, which happens to be just down the street from the jail where Rob was being held. So Emmett and his friend went over for a talk with Flynn himself: Captain Morris Flynn of Sovereign City PD, who—this will surprise you not a bit—was also the person who first raised Rob’s name as a suspect.” He reached for the coffee Honora had poured in his absence. “And I’m guessing Thad put thumbscrews on him or something, because he broke fast. Apparently he had taken bribes from one or two or five people, and he got a phone call from someone who had all the details of his many illegal acts and claimed to have evidence. That someone—he says it was a female voice trying to sound like a male, and I don’t see any reason he’d tell the truth about his own crimes but lie about that—ordered Rob’s release, right down to the specific date and time, in exchange for keeping quiet.”
“A female voice?” Mrs. Hakelbarend repeated. “Rose Mirassat, maybe?”
Nick dunked a cookie into his cup. “I’m trying to picture dear Rose making that sort of phone call, and I’m having difficulty. I can’t see where she’d get that sort of information about a city cop, either. It’s not her line. She’s a confectioner, for heaven’s sake.”
“And this would have been difficult information to get, even for a carrier,” Mr. Hakelbarend said. “Flynn vomited out a handful of names of people he’d taken bribes from, and they were five very different criminal entities—not folks who generally play nicely with each other or who would be likely to band together to force a dirty cop’s hand, even if they’d had some shared reason to do it. Also not folks who’d have any reason to mix themselves up in a kidnapping. Not by a long chalk.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem likely that Peony’s abduction was pulled off by just one person,” Marzana’s mother said, “so there’s no reason to assume the person who made the call was the same person who originally collected the information about Flynn’s bribes. But this does suggest that one of the players has access to a significant trove of data.”
“That sounds more like Hickson Blount,” Nick said.
“Maybe,” Mrs. Hakelbarend agreed, but she sounded unconvinced. “Let’s talk to him next, if you can find him. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to invite Rose by, though I tend to agree with you that this sounds less and less like Rose’s kind of gig.”
“Consider it done,” Nick replied gallantly, brushing a single cookie crumb from his lapel as he stood.
They said their goodbyes, Marzana receiving a gentle tap on the crown of her head as he passed her on his way out of the dining room. But she stayed seated and quiet as she finished her last cookie, listening as her parents lingered in the hall behind her after seeing Nick to the door. She was not disappointed.
“I actually think this new information rules Hickson Blount out,” Marzana’s mother said. “He’s not that good. There can’t be many people who would have had access to this level of data, not from such varied sources.”
“But we do know of at least one person who could,” Mr. Hakelbarend said quietly. “You gonna make that call you told Emmett you might?”
Marzana turned nonchalantly as her mother made a sound of resignation. “Seems like I should, doesn’t it? If he didn’t provide that information, he’ll know who did.” Frowning pensively, she cracked the knuckles of her left hand with her thumb. “I’ll try Tasha. Of course, if her grandfather’s involved, she’ll politely decline to help.”
“And if he did give the caller the information?”
“If he did,” Mrs. Hakelbarend said grimly, “then we have a huge problem.”
Marzana didn’t have to wonder who her parents were talking about, not with the image of the sketched bird fresh in her mind.
Can you put me in touch with the Snakebird? Emmett had asked. I may not know who he is, but I know he’s out there.
And then, her mother: I’m sorry . . . I can’t introduce you. But I give you my word that if I think it’ll help, I’ll go to him myself.
Her parents returned to the table and began to gather the coffee and dessert dishes. Marzana made her face as blank as Emilia Cabot’s. In her mind, the swinging knot of Gammerbund began to come apart as a strange, serpent-necked bird landed upon it, knocking it off its trajectory, and, with a long and needle-sharp beak, began to pick it apart.
Thief knot, grief knot, what knot.
“Marzana?”
She looked up abruptly. Her mother held out her hand for Marzana’s plate. “Thanks.” She could see her mother watching her out of the corner of her eye as she gathered the last of the dishes, but Marzana couldn’t begin to tell what she was thinking.
Marzana went up to her room just a bit earlier than usual after dinner and rifled through her desk drawers for anything that looked like it might be useful to someone who, like Emilia, was in the habit of finding adventures on a daily basis.
She found a pocket flashlight and the multi-tool her father had given her, added a pocket notebook and a space pen that would write at any angle (also a gift from her dad), and, after a moment’s thought, tossed the shoelace she’d been practicing knots with onto the little pile. Then she rooted around in her closet for a little cross-body purse she never used because it was too small for books. The components of her beginner toolkit fit inside with room to spare, which was good because Marzana was pretty sure she’d wind up adding more to it.
She hung the purse from her doorknob, then took the first Sidledywry Knot book over to the window nook. It was past eleven when she finally set it down, finished. By the end, with most of the original Knot destroyed in the explosion that consumed Cartonfield, Casie—having changed her name to Nell Southsea to preserve the fiction that she, too, had perished in the conflagration—and the few survivors had begun rebuilding the syndicate from the ground up. With almost no resources, they had dedicated themselves to the two endeavors that presumably would drive the rest of the series: bringing to light the conspiracy that the Knot had been attempting to unravel before it had been destroyed, and locating the traitor or traitors who had betrayed the organization and allowed it to be so devastatingly attacked.
But really, Marzana thought as she closed the first book, the story that mattered was about the friends Casie/Nell pulled together to populate the new Knot. Not all of them were even precisely friends—but they were all in it together, all working as one toward the cause of justice. And the new recruits were kids. Because in the world of the book, it was clear that the adults had been lost long ago: they were powerless, or hopeless, or corrupt, or they just didn’t care enough about anyone other than themselves to do the work. If there was justice to be found, it wasn’t coming from the grownups.
This was the fictional world Peony had been living in before she had been taken: a world full of friends who had your back, even when the adults couldn’t be trusted. Who did she think would be coming for her now? Was she sitting somewhere, lost and lonely, and praying the adults in her life were better than the ones in her book?