Promised (20 page)

Mace and Pearl exchanged a wordless glance, and then Pearl cleared her throat. “I'm getting you some dry things. Mace, keep it simple.” She stepped out of the kitchen.

“Angie, you run on up to bed,” Mace said.

“I'm going with Mlass Gaia,” the girl said.

Gaia turned, regarding the girl with a lifted eyebrow. “I'll come back for you before I leave the Enclave. You'll be safe here. Go on up.”

Angie stubbornly shook her head and sat down firmly on the bottom step.

Gaia let a beat of silence pass, and then moved in front of her. “You know I'm the Matrarc, right?”

Angie nodded, watchful.

“And you want to help me, don't you?” Gaia went on.

The girl put a hand to her throat, spreading her fingers along her voice box.

“Then you'll listen to me,” Gaia said. “I don't put up with people who can't follow orders. You will stay here and obey Mace and Pearl in my absence. You'll be respectful and work hard. I told you to go to bed. Now, go.” She pointed up the stairs.

Angie's eyes watered up. Her chin wobbled. Gaia did not yield. The girl spun to her feet and clambered up the stairs, and a second later, a door closed.

Gaia turned to find Mace considering her, his lips pursed. “Like I said. You've grown up,” he said.

“I don't always like it,” Gaia said. She knew Angie was fragile enough as it was without turning on her, but she couldn't have the girl following her.

He pulled a mound of dough toward him and started kneading. “You've heard about Myrna Silk's blood bank?”

“Yes.”

“Some of the parents who have lost children to hemophilia have organized here inside the wall,” he said. “We donate resources to Masister Silk when we can, and there's a movement of reformers who want to overhaul the Enclave's health system. We haven't gotten too far yet, but we meet up once a month. We're talking.”

It made her think of Derek and Ingrid working with people outside the wall to create a clearing house for advanced children who wanted to find their birth parents, and the relationships that formed from that. All sorts of new alliances were happening now. “This wouldn't be connected to Derek, would it?”

Mace looked at her shrewdly. “There's some overlap. The issues are different, but the point is, people are finding each other. We're using our connections.”

“Does the Protectorat know?” she asked.

“No. And I'd rather he didn't,” he said. “I'm just telling you because if you need anything, I think I could find people to help you.”

“What we need is water for New Sylum,” she said. “Not just deliveries of barrels, either. We need a reliable pipeline, or better yet, our own waterworks system tapping directly into the geothermal plant.”

“That's going to be expensive,” he said. “I'm not sure what we can do, but my friends would be sympathetic, at least. We've heard some of the wealthier people want a change to the health care, too. Some of the people behind the Vessel Institute. We're not sure how to approach them, or if it's safe to.”

“Leon might be able to help with that. He knows the wealthy families. He grew up with them. Did you tell him?”

“It didn't come up.” Mace kneaded the dough a couple more turns, set it aside, and reached for another mound.

Understanding gradually came to her. “You still don't trust him, do you?” Gaia asked. “That's why you don't want me going after him, either.”

Mace rubbed at his eyebrow with the knuckle of his thumb. “We took in Angie when he brought her,” he said.

“That's not an answer.”

Mace shrugged. “Derek vouches for Leon. I know that. And I gather he's important to you. I don't suppose anything as boring as my own concern for his reputation would make you reconsider your feelings for him.”

“We're engaged,” Gaia said.

Mace stopped kneading and looked up with sharp eyes. “Are you, then.”

Gaia gathered he wasn't exactly thrilled. A slow burn began in her gut, as if he disrespected her, too.

“Is there anything else I should know? Are you expecting?” Mace asked.

Ouch,
she thought. “No. Not that it's any of your business.”

Pearl reappeared in the doorway, a pile of clean clothing in her hands. “I was trying to find a red cloak,” she began, then stopped, looking back and forth between them.

“Gaia tells me she's engaged to Leon Grey,” Mace said.

Pearl eyebrows pinched in confusion. “Are you
sure
, Gaia?”

“Of course I am,” she said stiffly. “And he's Leon Vlatir now.”

“I know who he is,” Pearl said. She put up a hand. “It's just such a big decision and you're so young.”

Gaia's heart sank a notch lower. She'd thought of Mace and Pearl as family, but apparently they weren't. Or worse, maybe they were. This was the disapproval she'd expected from her own parents.

“Thanks. You know what? I'm just going to leave,” Gaia said.

“Nonsense. You just caught us by surprise.” Pearl gave a belated smile. “We wish you all happiness, of course. Let's get you changed. Mace, turn your back. Did he tell you that Leon went in through the library?”

“We didn't get that far,” Mace said, facing away.

“We were busy discussing if I was pregnant,” Gaia said.

“Mace!” Pearl said.

“She's not,” Mace said.

“Well, thank goodness for that,” Pearl said. “I should hope not. You, pregnant, and hardly more than a child yourself. The idea. Now here, hand me those wet things before you die of chill.”

Gaia stripped off her wet trousers and her blouse, and stepped into the dry, blue skirt Pearl handed her, then a clean blouse. The clothes were roomy, but she tucked in the blouse and rolled the waistline of the skirt neatly once to cinch it tighter. She took a moment to inspect her knees, which were bruising from her desperate crawl through the pipe. She touched the skin tenderly, then let the fabric drop to hide them.

“She's good now,” Pearl said. “You can turn around.”

Mace flicked his gaze toward Gaia, and then started kneading again.

“There's a library on the Square of the Bastion,” Pearl said. “Leon said there's an entrance to the tunnels in the basement. I had no idea, but it's supposed to connect to a tunnel that runs right under the square and straight toward the Bastion.” She explained directions to the library's back entrance.

“Will they let me in?” Gaia said.

“I don't know. Leon said he knew the librarian,” Pearl said. “Maybe you can explain that you're a friend. Let's see what I can find for candles. And your honey mushrooms gave me an idea.”

Pearl pulled up a wooden box from a low cupboard and began rummaging around. “Ah,” she said, producing what looked like a wide gray bar of soap. She stepped to the table and held it up to the light bulb, turning it slightly, and to Gaia's surprise, it began to glow a soft green color.

“Oliver made this for a school project,” Pearl said. “It's glow-in-the-dark chalk. It doesn't last long by itself, only a few minutes, but if candlelight hits it, you'll see it easily. You can draw arrows or marks on the tunnel walls as you go.”

Gaia took the stick, feeling the powderiness of the chalk. “What's it made of?”

“Zinc sulfide mostly,” Pearl said.

Gaia felt more hopeful as she took the chalk in her hand, giving it an experimental turn under the light to see the pale phosphorescence. A hint of outside gray light showed in the crack of the shutters, and Gaia didn't dare wait any longer. Pearl rapidly put the chalk together with some candles and matches in a bag, and Mace wrapped a couple of warm rolls in a paper before dropping them in.

Pearl pulled Gaia close in another hug.

“Get over here and try to say something nice,” Pearl said to Mace.

“Next time, plan on visiting longer,” he said to Gaia. He set a warm, heavy hand on her shoulder and looked frankly into her eyes. “Bring your fiancé by so we can have a chance to get to know him.”

“I will,” she said, feeling marginally better. “Take care of Angie,” she added, and slipped back outside.

*   *   *

Gaia walked quickly through the dim quiet streets, letting her hair fall forward to cover her left cheek. A couple of the coffee shops were opening, plus a small corner store that sold milk and eggs, but the rest of the merchants had yet to open their doors. It wasn't long before Gaia turned down the alley that backed up along the buildings on the Square of the Bastion, and followed Pearl's directions to a narrow green door. Old copper numbers bled green into the stone lintel: 49. She rapped. Then she curled her hands around her face and peered in the little window in the door.

A sconce light came on down a hallway, and a slender figure came progressively nearer. The door opened a crack and a young woman peeked out.

“Yes?” she asked.

Recognition took only an instant on both sides. Rita opened the door farther. “Come in. Quickly,” Rita said, guiding Gaia into a narrow hallway and bolting the door behind her.

Rita was no longer dressed in the distinctive red of the young female students who served in the Bastion, but in beige and cream. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a tidy ponytail, changing her appearance considerably, but her eyebrows arched over the same almond-shaped eyes, and her face was as delicately expressive as Gaia recalled.

“Leon didn't tell me you'd be coming,” Rita said, keeping her voice low.

“He didn't know,” Gaia said.

“Great,” Rita said. “Am I going to get filled in at some point?”

“What did he tell you?” Gaia asked.

“He didn't want me to know anything, for my own safety, like he's some big master spy now,” Rita said.

“I'm worried he's gotten hurt,” Gaia said.

“You don't know our boy very well if you can say that,” Rita said. “Have a little faith. He thinks fast on his feet.”

“Unless he's unconscious.”

Rita glanced briefly over her shoulder. “All right, I'm worried, too, but what's there to do? My aunt will be coming down any second. You can't stay here.”

“I'm going after him,” Gaia said.

Rita regarded her skeptically, and then apparently made a decision. Following Rita, Gaia bypassed the library's main reading room and took a staircase down to the archives. The close, dry smell of ink and old paper made Gaia sneeze. Dozens of shelves were packed so closely together that Gaia's shoulders would have touched both sides if she were passing through the aisles straight.

“Watch your step there,” Rita said, as they descended into a second room that was even more tightly packed.

Little wisps of colored paper poked out between the books like flags, and Gaia inadvertently brushed her cheek against one.

“Have you been friends with Leon a long time?” Gaia asked.

“We were in the same class as kids,” Rita said. “He and Jack Bartlett and I ran together. Didn't he ever say anything about me?”

“He mentioned Jack.”

Rita laughed. “Perfect. He is so clueless. I only had a crush on him for four years in a row.” She glanced back, her eyes bright. “Don't worry. I'm over it. Sort of. Here we are.” They reached the end where an old, narrow door was fitted with clamps for a heavy beam. The beam was leaning against the wall. “Normally, we don't want any surprise intruders, but I've been leaving it open in case Leon comes back. Do you have any idea where you're going?”

Gaia replayed their progress through the house, remembering the turns, and pointed to her left. “I go that way toward the Bastion.”

“Correct,” Rita said.

“Thank you,” Gaia said. “I mean it.”

“I'll feel really stupid if you don't come back. So come back.”

“I will.”

Gaia lit a candle and then, with a last nod to Rita, she stepped through the door. She followed the dusty tunnel downward into air that had a different, fetid staleness. She held her candle high to illuminate the tunnel. To her right was darkness. To her left, far ahead, she could see daylight filtering down. A shallow gully cut down the center of the passage, with bits of rotting detritus that she surmised had been washed there by the last rain. She left her first glowing chalk mark at the base of the ramp: an arrow that pointed the way she was going.

Silence settled into her ears, nudged only by her own soft footfalls. The passage was nothing like the old mine routes she'd traveled with Leon, but she hoped those were ahead. As she came to the patch of daylight, she looked up several meters through a storm grid to a square of early morning sky. Faint voices and a rumbling of cartwheels sifted down.

Another patch of light shone farther along the tunnel, and when she looked up through that opening, the top of the obelisk was just visible. A pile of incongruously fresh-looking wooden boxes blocked much of the passage, as if someone had recently stored something there, but she was able to squeeze past to where the darkness was complete again. She lifted her candle to see glimmering spiderwebs, and pushed on.

When a scurrying passed over her shoe, she jumped. The hairless tail of a rat disappeared before her. The tunnel branched, and Gaia made another arrow mark at eye level on a stone that bulged out into the tunnel. She went only a little farther before she realized that finding Leon was going to be nearly impossible.

She didn't know which way he'd gone.

Or the tunnels themselves.

She should go back.

Gaia knew this, but when she thought of returning to the Jacksons' and doing nothing while he could be down here somewhere, hurt and needing her, she couldn't give up.

“Leon?” she said. Her voice sounded muffled and foreign.

A new passage on her right narrowed and descended into black granite, but the walls ahead were cut into a creamier stone, more like sandstone, so on instinct she went straight, hoping to find the tunnels she'd once traveled with Leon. Every time she came to a turn, she marked an arrow at eye level, and lifted the candle toward it to check that it glowed. She lost her inner sense of direction, and she couldn't help thinking again that this might be a mistake. But the tunnels had to lead somewhere, and she kept hoping she'd recognize some landmark from her earlier time there, like the fort area where Leon and his sisters had played as children.