The Keepers (22 page)

“It's decidedly
not
a lightsaber.”

“Well, I'm going to go on believing that it is until I find out otherwise.”

Gabriel's footsteps ground to a halt, and for a moment Horace thought he was going to scold Chloe. But instead he said calmly, “Stop. Quiet.”

They stopped. Horace listened hard but heard nothing except the sound of their own hushed breathing and the constant
rumble-hiss
of the tunnels.

“Riven,” Gabriel said. “Hunters.” And now, from far
behind, Horace heard a new sound rising, a complex beat rattling toward them. Footsteps. Coming fast. Horace felt Gabriel's strong hand on his shoulder. “Only two. I'll take care of them. Keep moving, quickly. Ahead there's another wall to climb. Wait for me at the top of the ledge. Do not use your instruments.”

“I can help,” Chloe said.

“You cannot,” said Gabriel, already turning back. “Go with Horace. Get to the top of the wall.” He began to race away, his strides light and long.

Horace felt his way onward through the dark as fast as he dared, Chloe beside him. He listened to the footsteps behind—Gabriel's soft ones receding and the heavier ones coming ever closer. Hunters, whatever that meant. Horace and Chloe reached the wall, as high as his shoulders. He heaved himself over the top with some difficulty, grunting, while Chloe seemed to scamper up as easily as a cat.

From far behind now, Horace heard talking, echoing and indistinct—first Gabriel's serene voice and then another one, thin and sinister. Dr. Jericho? Then Gabriel clearly said, “Come and find me, then,” but abruptly his voice was cut off. A massive silence swallowed the passageway below, as if the tunnel had been sealed with a giant earplug.

“What was that?” Chloe whispered.

“I don't know.”

They waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. And then as suddenly as it had come, the silence broke, torn away by a thunderous
roar. For a moment Horace was sure it was the golem, but then he realized—it was water. A rushing torrent, filling the tunnel below so quickly Horace could feel the air pressure increase, making his ears pop. This was why Gabriel told them to climb the wall; the passageway below was flooding. But where was he?

The thundering water grew closer. Now footsteps again, slapping hard through the wet, and Gabriel's voice: “Make way.” And then he was beside them, having vaulted up onto the ledge with apparent ease. The front wave of water slammed into the wall below a moment later, spraying Horace's legs. Slowly the thunder of the rising flood began to subside.

“We're safe,” Gabriel said. “They won't be following us now, and refuge is just ahead.”

“Was it Dr. Jericho?” Horace asked.

“No. Friends of his.”

“What did you do?” said Chloe.

“Where there are sewers, there is water. We were lucky they caught up to us here, where I could reach the floodgates.”

“That's not what I meant. I meant before that—the silence. You did something with your instrument, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said simply. “I had need.” He turned away, leaving them to follow.

Two hundred yards on, he stopped again. “Close your eyes.” A painful screeching and grinding bit into them, and the darkness was split by a blinding slice of light overhead. Horace threw his arm over his eyes. The light grew. The
ceiling was being pulled apart. But no: a pair of doors was opening above them. Fresh air poured in, crisp and welcome. Daylight. Blue sky. The pale green branches of a tree—a ginkgo.

Gabriel clambered slowly up a steep set of crude stone steps. Chloe and Horace followed, emerging through a pair of doors in the ground, like old cellar doors, into a small brick courtyard, completely enclosed by a stone wall perhaps fifteen feet high. The entire space was no bigger than Horace's own living room. With the encircling wall looming overhead, it felt like being in a zoo enclosure. There were a few benches here, and an assortment of thin shrubs along the wall. Horace noticed a ring of oddly shaped stones, about ten feet across, laid into the brickwork floor. In the center was a flat stone in the shape of a bird. Its wings were spread. It was so black it shone. A raven, he was sure—a leestone. The sight of it comforted him.

“What is this place?”

“A cloister,” Gabriel replied, lowering the cellar doors back into place. “A safe haven.”

Seeing him now in the sunlight for the first time, Horace's mouth fell open. The older boy's eyes were milky white with threads of blue, all the more startling against his dark skin. His gaze was distant and unfocused, not quite looking at them even though his head was cocked alertly in their direction.

“Crap, you're blind,” Chloe blurted out.

Gabriel laughed, broad and loud. “As a bat,” he replied.

Horace didn't bother protesting that bats in fact could see
just fine. But maybe after all it
was
accurate to say that Gabriel was as blind as a bat, since he seemed to get around all right. It was the walking stick, of course. Horace took a good look at it now—a dark wooden shaft and an engraved silver handle. The ornate silver tip was pointed sharply. Horace tried to imagine how it worked—echolocation, maybe?

Chloe, meanwhile, was waving at Gabriel, her face thick with doubt for some reason. She pretended to throw something at him. No reaction from Gabriel. Did she think he was faking it?

“You're wondering if I can see you,” Gabriel said. “I can't. I can hear Chloe waving her arms around like a monkey, but I don't need to be Tan'ji to do that.”

He sidestepped a frowning Chloe and crossed the courtyard, moving easily, using the cane more like an ordinary walking stick than a blind person's cane. “Every cloister has more than one way in or out. Some are just a little harder to find than others.” He felt along the wall, quickly locating a white, kite-shaped rock about the size of an eggplant. It was set flawlessly into the stonework, out of place but not so conspicuous that it drew attention to itself. He pressed his thumb and two fingers against the stone. They disappeared beneath the surface, the same way Chloe's hand had disappeared into the pillow.

“What?” Chloe said.

“This is a passkey,” Gabriel said. Keeping his fingers buried inside the white stone, he stepped forward and vanished
through the wall as though it weren't there. Horace gasped, and Chloe actually
tsk
ed. She looked thunderous, apparently angry that the passkey seemed to grant the same power as the dragonfly. A moment later, Gabriel reappeared. He stood clear and pulled his fingers out of the stone. “Chloe, it would be best if you did not—”

“I heard what the lady said.” The dragonfly's wings were already a blur. She gave the passkey an irritated huff through her nose and swept through the wall beside it.

“Now you,” Gabriel said, his ghostly gaze floating just over Horace's head. “Push your fingers into the stone. Inside you will feel a small cube—the tumbler. Keep your fingertips pressed against the tumbler while you move through the wall. Don't let the contact slip, even for an instant. Once you're through, pull your fingers out through the other side of the stone, being absolutely sure they emerge last. I don't think I have to tell you what will happen if you lose contact with the passkey.”

Horace, of course, did not need to be told. He thought of all of Chloe's scars. He stepped up and pushed his fingers against the stone. It felt a little like dipping his fingers into very thin water, slightly cool. Beneath the surface, he found a small, hard shape and gripped it firmly with his fingertips. He stepped forward, and the tumbler rotated with him. The wall passed through him like a tingling curtain. On the far side he found Chloe, watching skeptically. She stood at the bottom of a short stairwell outside a tall building. The sounds of the city
were all around them, rude and loud. Horace eased his fingers out of the kite-shaped stone. Overhead, the high wall of the cloister rose up into the branches of the ginkgo behind it, but other than that there was no sign of the little hidden courtyard that lay just beyond.

“Wicked,” he said.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Please,” she said.

In the next instant Gabriel joined them, spinning nimbly through and pulling his fingers from the stone like a dancer. He moved slowly up the stairs—his blindness apparent now, making him slow and cautious up the steps. He used his cane to find his way.

Out on the sidewalk, Gabriel led them to an already waiting taxicab, idling at the curb. Gabriel herded the two of them inside, closing the door behind them. He nodded to the driver—a heavily bundled, lumpy figure that Horace couldn't identify as man or woman.

Horace rolled down the window. “I don't think we have money for a cab,” he said. He felt the driver's eyes on him in the mirror.

“It's fortunate, then, that this isn't that kind of cab,” said Gabriel. “We will meet again soon, I hope.” He gave a small bow. “Keepers,” he said, and with that he stepped back, and the cab swung into traffic.

H
ORACE STOOD IN HIS DRIVEWAY FOR A LONG SWIRLING
moment, his head full of all he'd seen and heard and done. He was disoriented, wrestling now with the simple act of walking into his own home. It seemed like one of the most bizarre things he could be asked to do. After leaving the cloister, the cab driver had dropped them a block from Horace's house—wordlessly and without taking any money—the fare meter on the cab had read 0.00 the entire trip.

Chloe had been surly during the cab ride. She was pouting, Horace guessed, because of the passkey. It did what the dragonfly could do. Now she stood scowling in his driveway.

“That thing. That passkey,” she said, as if he'd been reading her mind. “What was it like?”

“I don't know. Weird. Kind of cold. It wasn't the same as the dragonfly.”

“How would you know?”

Horace shrugged. “How would you?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, then nodded. She rocked back on her heels and rubbed her wrists together, looking at his house. “So. This is where you live, huh?”

“You're hilarious,” said Horace.

He took her inside. This was the first time she'd used the front door. Somehow it made things different for Horace, more grown-up; he wondered if she felt that way too. They found his mother in the kitchen, up to her wrists in dough, working on a turkey potpie. Horace introduced Chloe, saying he'd run into her at the park, that they'd remembered each other from the districtwide chess festival back in April—a story Horace had worked out on the cab drive home.

If his mother was skeptical, or even surprised, she didn't show it. Horace had already decided he couldn't ask his parents if Chloe could stay the night. His mom was cool, but probably not that cool. Or even if she was, his dad wasn't. Meanwhile, Chloe was the only girl Horace had ever had over at all. He barely knew what to do or say, or where to go.

To his surprise, however, Chloe turned out to be a parent charmer. She shook his mother's hand, despite the flour and dough bits, and asked if she could help with dinner. His mom said no, but looked happy just to be asked. Chloe complimented their home, mentioning a painting in the hallway that Horace had never given a thought to before. Then the two of them started raving about some other artist they really liked, and so on, and when Horace tuned back in, they had
somehow gotten around to making jokes about the filthiness of Horace's hands and the general disarray of his hair—as though the implausible cleanliness of girls gave them the right. Horace hardly said a word. Before long, Chloe got an invitation to dinner.

Chloe called her father—or pretended to; it was hard to tell—and then led the way up to Horace's room. Horace wasn't sure this would be allowed, but Chloe took it so much for granted and his mother seemed so unconcerned that he felt stupid for having to follow Chloe's lead.

They waited for dinner. Chloe didn't seem inclined to talk about the day's events, so Horace didn't bring it up. They got out his marbles, and he taught her how to play. He beat her soundly, without really trying, but she kept at it. They weren't playing for keepsies, obviously. He beat her seven times in a row, but she never suggested they do something else.

“It's because your hands are so small,” Horace pointed out. “It's harder to hold the shooters right.”

“There are people with smaller hands than me. I don't hear them failing at marbles.”

They came downstairs later to check on dinner and encountered Horace's father in the kitchen, peeling a corner of crust off the turkey potpie. His father turned and caught sight of Chloe, the crust halfway to his mouth.

“Who are you?” he asked, ignoring Horace altogether.

“I'm Chloe.”

“Are you the girlfriend?”

Horace thought he might die, but Chloe hardly blinked. “We prefer not to label things.”