Legacy of the Claw (12 page)

Tremelo re-entered the room. “Ants to this place,” he muttered. “I can never find anything I'm looking for .… ” The corner of a large trunk stuck out from behind a sagging armchair, and Tremelo dragged it out into the few feet of space left in the center of the floor. Bailey and Tori pressed against the closest bookshelf to make room. Tremelo opened the trunk, trying to block Bailey and Tori's view with his shoulders, but not before Bailey saw a jumble of odd-looking glass vials and beakers, and a huge book bound with what looked like real leather, embossed with the image of an animal. He exchanged a worried look with Tori.

“Aha!” said Tremelo, and he held up a small jar of grayish salve. “Very rare, very potent. Hold out your arm.” Bailey did as he was told, though he wondered if he wouldn't regret it.

The salve stung like someone had just rubbed bits of sand on a sunburn. His whole arm began to itch.

“Don't touch it; I know you'll want to,” Tremelo warned. He released Bailey's arm.

The top of the trunk on the floor was still open. Bailey leaned forward to get a better look, but Fennel leapt onto the top of the trunk, closing it before he could manage so much as a glance. Her golden eyes narrowed.

“Her favorite snack is curious students,” Tremelo said with an angry edge to his voice. “Mind she doesn't get ahold of you.” He sat down on the edge of the armchair, resting his elbows on his knees and fixing both Bailey and Tori with a stern stare.

“Now, if you two are at all interested in staying at Fairmount— or even staying alive—then listen up.”

“I REALIZE THAT I am hardly a paragon of responsibility,” said Tremelo. “But I have the power to get both of you booted out of this school, so I suggest you listen to me very carefully all the same.”

Bailey glanced at Tori. Her black hair hung messily around her face, and made her look like a small child about to be reprimanded. Her snake had settled inside the collar of her pajama top, and was as still as if it were just a piece of heavy jewelry.

Bailey swallowed.

“Some rules are complete bunk,” said Tremelo, pacing. “And we all know it. Curfews, what have you. But going past the school grounds into the Dark Woods at night is pure idiocy. Whatever you have to prove, either of you, you do it within Fairmount grounds.”

Tremelo turned his dark eyes on them. He was angry, Bailey could see that plainly. His eyebrows were furrowed, and underneath his mustache, his lips were pursed as though he was trying to stop himself from cursing. But there was something else there too that Bailey could see: the way Tremelo's fingers, which had shot those arrows so expertly, so calmly, were trembling. The gleam of sweat on Tremelo's forehead. He was worried.

“There are reasons the Dark Woods are forbidden, and they have nothing to do with silly stories or schoolboy dares. Real dangers lurk in those woods. You could have been killed tonight. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Tori whispered.

Bailey knew that he was already in enough trouble, and that the smartest thing to do would be to answer yes and take his punishment. But he couldn't ignore what he'd seen in the woods. There were
people
out there with dangerous, aggressive kin, and Tremelo didn't seem to care.

“I
don't
understand, sir,” Bailey said, forcing himself to meet Tremelo's gaze. “There are people in the woods. I want to know why. Why did they attack us? What do they want with Fairmount?”

Tremelo glared at him.

“You'll recall what I said about being too curious? It would behoove you to stop snooping around when you're only going to get yourself and your friends hurt.” Tremelo passed a hand across his eyes. “You are letting yourself get carried away, Bailey, and it's not going to help you do what you've come to this school to do. Your job here at this school is simply to keep yourself out of harm's way and let those who know what they're doing take care of the real threats. Now, I ask you again: do you understand?”

Bailey burned with anger, but he nodded. Tremelo knew more than he was letting on, that much was obvious. Was the professor angrier that Bailey was breaking the rules  …  or that he was asking questions?

Tremelo escorted them back to the dorms. They walked a few paces behind Tremelo as he led them on the path from the teachers' quarters to the main campus.

“How does your arm feel?” asked Tori quietly.

Bailey hadn't even thought about his arm since the tingling from the salve had worn away. He looked down at it now. The blood had dried, and the skin around the wound was healing already.

“It's fine, I think,” he said. He ran his hand over the wound. The scabbing was smooth.

“You'll be lucky if you don't have a scar,” said Tori, looking up ahead at Tremelo.

Bailey thought of Tori's scars, and the way she was always careful to conceal them with long sleeves. But tonight, in the excitement, she had forgotten; her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and in the light from the moon and the few dim lampposts on the main path, Bailey could see the puckered, glossy skin running the length of both forearms. She saw him looking and sighed, rolling down her sleeves again.

“It was a fire,” Tori said, sensing the question in his eyes, “in our apartment when I was a kid.” She kept her eyes on Tremelo's back as he walked ahead of them. “I was just a couple years old. Some of the Jackal's supporters lit fires in parts of the city when Parliament deposed him.” She shuddered. “That's why my parents are so scared of the Dominae. The Gray City always gets caught in the middle.”

Up ahead, Tremelo stopped short and swirled around to face them. They'd reached Treetop.

“We're the only ones who know the extent of your wandering tonight,” said Tremelo. “So let's keep it as such, shall we? If Headmaster Finch finds out, this won't be a very happy story for either of you. But in exchange for my silence, you two have to promise me that you will
stay away
from the woods.”

Reluctantly, Bailey nodded. Tori said a quiet, clipped “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” said Tremelo. “Believe me. I'll be watching.”

He pointed Tori toward the front door of Treetop. Tori turned her thin shoulders and glanced at Bailey as she slinked away, and her snake flicked its tongue in his direction. Bailey gave a small wave as she disappeared into the dimly lit Treetop entrance.

Tremelo put his hand on Bailey's back and guided him on toward the Towers.

“I'm sorry, sir,” Bailey began. He was well aware that this was the second time that Tremelo had caught him out of his dorm late at night, and he didn't know what the professor might be thinking.

Tremelo held up a hand, cutting Bailey off. With his other hand, he reached into the collar of his shirt and fished out a small pendant on a chain.

“This is for you,” he said. He lifted the chain over his neck and handed it to Bailey, who was too confused to argue. The pendant was coin-like, a small, round piece of metal with the image of a sleeping fox engraved on one side, and some letters on the other. Both sides were worn, and Bailey could only just make out Tremelo's own name on the talisman.

“I don't understand.” Bailey asked. “It's yours. It has your name on it.”

Tremelo looked away, as though he was thinking very hard about how to answer.

“It was given to me when I finally Awakened to my Animas,” he said. “My father told me that it would offer protection. I don't even know if I believe it at all—he was a superstitious old kook about many things—but I like to think that it's true, in this case.”

Tremelo knelt until his eyes were level with Bailey's, and he did not look away.

“You hold on to that for me, and mind what I said about the Dark Woods. Your Absence is a unique problem, I know. And perhaps that's what drives you to un-puzzle things the way you do. But you're not safe—not in the woods. And next time I may not be there to help.”

Bailey nodded. He looked once more at the sleeping fox on the pendant, and slipped it into the pocket of his work pants. Tremelo stood and began to walk back toward the teachers' quarters when Bailey suddenly remembered something.

“King's Finger Oak,” he called out.

Tremelo turned. He raised an arched eyebrow.

“A tree that bears seeds, but no fruit,” Bailey continued. “That's one part of the riddle, isn't it?”

Tremelo didn't move except to stroke his mustache in thought. He seemed about to say something, but then changed his mind.

“Go to bed, Bailey,” he said instead and walked away.

TREMELO GLANCED AT THE clock tower as he made his way back to the teachers' quarters. Two thirty, a time when any sane person would be trying to get some sleep. But as usual, Tremelo's mind was too busy to let him rest.

“King's Finger Oak,” Tremelo said aloud, and shook his head. Tremelo sighed. He was no better than his father, telling riddles that had no answer. He could see his father now: the bottle-thick monocle and its dangling, fraying string. The frizzed white hair, the patchy velvet waistcoat. The smile. What Tremelo wanted more than anything was the ability to ask the Loon what the night's events meant.

Figure it out yourself, boy!
he'd say.
You figure out how things work, you learn the world by heart. Everything is just one gear putting pressure on another.

Figure it out yourself
. Of course, the Loon had never been talking about real gears, but about people.

The Loon was a loving father, but inattentive. He'd worked for Melore as a scholar, but after the king's death, which happened when Tremelo was quite young and now did not remember, the Loon continued his studies obsessively, even dragging Tremelo from the city to the mountains, sometimes with only a moment's notice. He'd been too busy with his theories and stories of the old Seers, the Velyn tribe, and King Melore to take care of a small child in the midst of his conspiring followers, the RATS. The RATS themselves may have introduced Tremelo to myrgwood and rootwort rum when he was a young boy, but they'd also been the ones to help him retrieve his father's books and papers years later, after the Jackal had the Loon killed. Tremelo had been twenty-two then, and after his father's death, the RATS helped him search his father's home and study for the Loon's hidden books before the Jackal's soldiers returned to loot it again.

The past, the past. Recently, the past had been calling to him more and more.

Tremelo reached his carriage house's door and stomped up the narrow stairs. Fennel sat upright on the highest shelf of his desk, waiting. Tremelo lifted open the trunk on the floor and pulled out the heavy, leather-bound book. It was a miracle that the book had survived after the Loon's murder—and a miracle that Tremelo had managed to find it in the Loon's ransacked home without losing his own life. Despite all that, the book had never been of any use to him  …  until now.

Tremelo turned to the first page, and ran his fingers over the familiar handwriting—familiar, and totally unreadable. None of the RATS had been able to decipher it, either. It was, his father had said, the language of the Seers—but after the Loon's death, Tremelo had no desire for another trek through the mountains to find them. The Velyn would have known, and many of them would have helped him, but they were all dead now. The Jackal had made sure of that. After all that bloodshed, Tremelo had done with the book the same thing he'd done with his father's prophecies— dismissed it as an object of a past that no longer meant anything.

But after tonight  …  he was no longer sure.

He had seen the two people Bailey had glimpsed through the trees. Fennel had been hot on their trails, and Tremelo, in a deep meditative state just outside the woods, had seen through her eyes. First, he'd seen flashes of the two nervous kids out where they had no business prowling around, and then two faces and darkly colored handmade clothing. A cloak on one, trimmed with wolf's fur. An earring made from the talon of a crow.

And on the back of a wrinkled hand, a tattoo.

Now Tremelo sat in his armchair in the safe warmth of his familiar apartment, but he felt far from easy. He flipped the pages hastily and then stopped. For a long time he sat staring, unable to move, unable to tear his eyes away from the page.

There, in his father's book, was the same collection of lines and dashes that he'd seen on the hand of the man in the woods.

GWEN WALKED PURPOSEFULLY down a hallway in the high-ceilinged stone Parliament building to fetch an evening snack from the kitchens for the Elder. Even through the fortified walls, she could hear chanting outside.

It had been just over two weeks since the Elder's return to Parliament, and in that time the riots in the city had grown in size and strength. Stirred by the Dominae's promises of power, the poverty-stricken citizens of the Gray City's poorest districts had gathered in the Parliament square to protest. Many storefronts and tenements near the city's center had been looted or, worse, torched. Just the night before, a blaze had started on the streets near the palace. Gwen glanced out a tall window, and through the smoke and flames, she could make out the rioters, holding sticks and clubs, and shouting,
“We will be free! We will be free!”

As dangerous as it was outside the walls of the palace, however, the real danger was inside. The air in the halls was tense with whispering and worry. Instead of banding together to push back against Viviana, Parliament had only become more fractured, with members disappearing every few days, perhaps afraid of the riots outside.

“Shouldn't the riots prove to Parliament that Viviana is a threat?” Gwen had asked the Elder earlier in his study.

“Violence has a way of distracting us from our goals,” he'd replied, watching the melee below. “I'm certain that the Dominae has spies in Parliament who would enjoy nothing more than to see us crumble. Our failure to declare Viviana an official enemy of the people is proof that she has many members of Parliament on her side already.”

As she rounded a corner near the kitchens, Gwen saw two Parliament members reflected in a hanging mirror: a large, glowering man followed by a gristly warthog and a spindly woman with a look of permanent irritation. Gwen almost kept going and walked past them, but she drew back when she heard the word
Viviana
.

“Are you ready?” the Animas Warthog said. “I have heard that Viviana will be there in person.”

Gwen pressed herself flat against the wall, where she could not be seen. She felt her heart begin to beat faster.

“Just so long as the rabble stays away,” the woman replied. “I don't want to be recognized.”

From the open window at the end of the hall, the voices of that rabble drifted to where Gwen hid.
“We will be free. We will be free!”

“Never fear,” said the Animas Warthog. “This rally is for the inner circle only.”

“As long as the Elder and the other loyalists like him don't find out  … ”

“
Pshh!
The Elder's worn out his welcome, I say. He'll be the first to go when Viviana takes power. Perhaps sooner  … ”

Gwen stifled a gasp. She could barely believe what she was hearing.

The conspirators were on the move. Their shadows lengthened around the corner as they made their way toward the spot where she stood. Frantically, Gwen scanned the hall for something to hide behind. A door stood ajar only feet away, and just as the twosome turned the corner, Gwen slipped inside a rarely used retiring room. She held her breath, afraid that they'd heard her movement. Instinctively, her fingers flew to her short red hair, which she began twirling anxiously.

As they passed by, Gwen made a decision. She'd follow them. She would go to this rally and find out everything she could; she and the Elder could use that information to expose the spies in Parliament. The Elder had saved her life—she owed him this much. Finding any evidence to align loyal Parliament members behind him could change everything.

Observing them from a distance, she followed the two Dominae sympathizers down a dank hallway in the basement of the Parliament building. The lamps in the corridor were very dim, and the stone smelled like rainwater. She paused as the two conspirators pulled the heavy basement door open and stepped up the stone stairs into the alley. She waited several seconds before she dared approach the door and follow them out into the night. As she emerged into the alleyway, she tried to send out a call—she could feel the presence of the owls that normally roosted in the towers of the palace. She'd need their help to stay on course without being seen by the people she was following. A dark shape flew through the patch of sky that hung over the alley, and Gwen saw an eager young barn owl leading her onward.

She thought about the Elder, alone in his study—he would worry about her if she didn't return soon with a bowl of roasted almonds from downstairs. But she couldn't tell him—he would only forbid her to go, as he'd done so many times before. This was her chance to prove herself to him.

Above her, the owl screeched encouragingly. She hurried on, past a group of men gathered around a waste-can fire and into the dark alleys that led to the Gudgeons. Be brave, she told herself. The Elder needs you.

She was going to meet the Dominae.