It was hard to tell what was happening. I heard the clatter of something wooden—Halla’s bow, I assumed—and then the sound of someone falling to the ground. Halla called out and I heard Sukey’s voice cry out in pain and then Zander saying, “I’ve got her!” and Sukey’s voice saying, “That’s me, you idiot!” and then the sound of someone hitting the floor. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I sort of launched myself toward where I thought they were, and when I felt the long fabric of Halla’s dress, I tried to feel for her hands but kept getting knocked over by someone—Zander? Sukey?—who was also scrambling around on the ground.
“The light!” Zander called and I heard someone knock against the torchbox on the wall and suddenly the room was full of light again. My glasses had fallen off in the confusion and it took me a minute to find them and look around.
Zander, Sukey, and I were sprawled out on the floor and Halla, the bow back in her hands, the arrow in it pointed right at us, was across the room, aiming her weapon at us and glaring as though she really wanted to let it fly this time. The backpack had opened up in the scuffle, spilling out leather packages of meat and cheese and fruit.
“That was not a smart thing to do,” she said after a minute.
“Not as far as we’re concerned.” Sukey sat up, rubbing her elbow, which must have gotten hurt in the scuffle. “You were going to kill us.”
“I wasn’t going to kill you,” Halla said. “I found out about your sister. And I brought you food and water.” She gestured toward the backpack. “See. You might as well. It’s just going to go to waste otherwise.”
“Where’s M.K.? Is she okay?” Zander and I both jumped up, sitting back down when Halla tightened her grip on the bow.
“She’s alive, anyway,” Halla said, watching us carefully. “One of the Keedow’s guards found her. She had been attacked by the cat, but I heard someone say she’d defended herself with a knife and done more damage to the cat than it had done to her. They said she had a bad infection on her arm, but they treated it and she’s going to be healthy again.”
I felt relief wash over me. “That’s our M.K.,” Zander said. “Where is she?”
“They’ve got her in a locked room in the city,” Halla told us. “I couldn’t figure out a way to get to see her without making everyone suspicious. They saw your firewood and the plants you collected and they’re convinced someone came with her. They’re looking everywhere in the canyon. I’m not going to be able to keep you here very long.” She pushed the food toward us with her foot. “Eat something. Whatever happens, you’ve got to have something to eat.”
“She’s right,” I said, feeling a little guilty now. “It’s been hours and hours since we ate. If we’re going to find M.K., we’re going to need energy.”
“Don’t they lure rats into traps with food?” Sukey muttered. “Cheese. Peanut butter. Isn’t that how they get them to go in? It’s probably poisoned.”
Zander thought about that for a minute. “No. There wouldn’t be any reason to poison it,” he said, looking up at Halla. “Let’s eat.” I was so hungry I found it pretty easy to take the peach he offered me, along with a couple of swallows of water from a leather pouch, a slice of bread, and some cooked meat cut into strips. We sat down and devoured the meal and it wasn’t long before Sukey came over and started eating, too.
“Thank you,” I said finally, looking up at Halla, who was now watching us with an annoyed expression.
“You’re lucky you’re still alive, you know,” Halla said after a minute. “What was your plan here, anyway?”
No one said anything so finally I told her. “The plan was that you were going to help us get M.K. and then show us how to get out of the canyon.”
“And when you get to the other side, you’ll tell everyone about the canyon, right? Without a thought as to what would happen to us when the rest of the world found out about us?”
We all looked at each other. We couldn’t deny that’s what we had been planning to do. But when she put it like that, it sounded pretty bad.
“Well,” I said finally, “if it’s true that only a few people know about you, it is a pretty amazing archaeological find.”
“There are species of animals no one’s ever seen before,” Zander said. “I owe it to science to…” Halla rolled her eyes and he trailed off.
“And the gold,” Zander went on. “Don’t you know how much it’s worth? I mean, this is an incredible place. People will want to see this…”
But as he said it, I could almost hear Dad’s voice, railing against the governments that had looted the New Lands for resources. “They don’t care about the discovery. They only care about the money they can squeeze out of it!” he’d ranted. “And BNDL doesn’t do a damned thing to stop it. It’s criminal!”
Zander looked worried and I knew he was thinking the same thing that I was. What would happen to the people in the canyon when everyone came to get the gold? When the Nackleys came? When Mr. Mountmorris got here? When ANDLC decided to extract all the gold?
None of us said anything and Halla watched us for a minute before saying, “How did you get here, anyway? No one’s supposed to be able to get anywhere near the caverns.”
“Because you kill everyone who gets anywhere close, right?” Sukey’s voice was very quiet.
I was staring at all the gold, Dan Foley’s gold, and thinking fast, remembering the thought I’d had when I’d first seen the city.
“No,” I said after a minute. “Not everyone. They didn’t kill Dad.” I hesitated for a moment, trying to keep the thoughts clear in my head. “Dad didn’t get killed. For some reason Dad didn’t get killed. Dad came here and maybe he was looking for the treasure, but then he found this. He found the gold and the city. And he must not have told… he must not have told anyone.” I looked at Halla and lowered my voice. “He didn’t want us to tell anyone. That was what Dad’s secret map was about. That’s why he hid it for us to find. That’s why the man with the clockwork hand gave the book to me. Dad did want us to come here.”
I sat there thinking for a minute, trying to get it all straight, and then I started talking more quickly, my words racing to keep up with my thoughts. “I think he wanted us to see this, to see your city, but I think that he didn’t want us to tell anyone about it. He wanted us to keep it a secret the way he had.”
“He didn’t tell anyone,” Zander added. “We would have known if he had. Raleigh would have known.”
Halla and Sukey were watching us.
“He must have convinced them—” I looked at Halla— “must have convinced you, your people, that he wouldn’t tell. And they must have let him go.”
She nodded just a bit, a movement of her head so slight that it could have been a twitch. But I didn’t think so. “What?” I asked her. “What do you know? Did you know him?”
“She couldn’t have known him,” Sukey said. “You said he was here twenty years ago. She’s our age.”
Halla just listened.
“What?” I asked her again. “What do you know?”
She looked from me to Zander, studying Zander for quite a long time before she said, “Tell me about your father.”
“He was an Explorer and a mapmaker,” I said. “He’s gone now, dead, but we found a map of Drowned Man’s Canyon. And we heard a story about treasure. So we came looking.”
“We had no idea you were here,” Sukey said. “Honestly. It was just about the treasure.”
“Other people have come looking for the treasure,” she said. “We can’t understand why. It’s just aurobel.” She shrugged. “There’s so much of it here.”
“Well, outside the canyon it’s worth a lot,” Zander told her. “A lot.”
She looked at Zander, studying him again for a long moment.
“What was your father’s name?” she asked finally.
“Alexander West.”
“What are your names?”
Zander looked confused. “I’m Zander. This is my brother, Kit, and our friend Sukey. Our sister’s name is M.K.”
“What was your… what’s the word? Nickname. What’s your nickname. That your father called you?”
We all looked at each other. “He called us ‘the Expeditioners’,” I told her finally.
She watched us for a long time. I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was, like a princess or a mythical queen, standing there with her bow, her black dress all around her, her hair hanging down around her face from the scuffle, her eyes intelligent, wondering. When she turned them to me, I felt as though she was trying to learn about me by watching me, by staring at my face. My glasses were slipping down on my nose and I pushed them up, embarrassed for some reason.
“I have something to show you,” Halla said finally. “There’s something you really have to see.”