The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (12 page)

I let her drag me down the hall and up the dark stairs toward
the day.  The air got colder and colder as we marched up the steps, then Pika
flung open the door and shouted,

“Snow!”

I yelped and ran out after her, laughing and shivering and
teeth chattering like crazy.

“Hayli Hayli,
look!
” she cried and spun toward me,
and before I could blink I was staring at her through a cold white mask. 

I scrubbed the snow from my face and pelted after her,
scooping at the drifts.  My boots slipped in the slush and Pika screeched,
sliding and skipping toward the street.

She stopped at the gate and I blasted the snowball at her,
missing by a full foot.  But then I thought it wasn’t so bad that I’d missed,
because she’d stopped playing.  She hung out the gate, head swinging back and
forth as she watched the road.

I sloshed up beside her.  “What’re we waiting for?”

Pika was counting so she didn’t answer, not for a good
while.  Then she said, “They should be up Seventh and Chase by now.”

“How’d you ken that?”

She flashed me a wild grin, her eyes crinkling up into
little crescents.  “Just…
trust
me.”

And she darted off across the street.  I barely caught up
with her before she winked away down a side alley.  For such a wee skitter she
sure knew the streets, better than I knew my own face.  I followed close as I
could, lungs screaming at the cold, hands batting at little white flakes still
fleeing the sky.

Just when I thought I’d like to curl up and die somewhere
cold and lonely, Pika skidded to a stop.

“See, I told you!  There they are!”

I pushed past her.  A whole herd of shivering souls had come
out to see the car, though I couldn’t quite tell why.  I’d seen the thing close
as you could, and I didn’t care to meet it again.  Maybe they wanted to see the
royal family.  A little part of my mind wondered what the prince thought about
all this.  Probably he loved it.  Probably he was just like the rest of them.

I stood on tiptoes to get a better goggle, but I got nothing
but mounds of coat backs and furs and too-large hats.  I hauled on Pika’s
hand.  We laced our way through knots of people, trying to get closer to the
barricades.

“I can’t see aught now, Hayli!” Pika hollered, in full-out
panic.  “I need a tree!”

I scanned the street until I spotted a twisty old tree
across the way that Pika could manage.  We darted across the street before the
coppers could catch us, and I gave Pika a leg up into the branches just as the
first of the mounted guards clopped past.

“Oh,
Hayli!
  I see it, I see it!”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Me too.”

The tree squatted on a little rise, leading up to the park
at Chase, so I could see a bit better there too.  The motorcar puffed and
snorted along, a big black metal horse of steam and gears chugging along after
the ones made of fur and hooves.  Little snappy flags of Cavnal perched on its
nose, a riot of green and gold against the black car and grey street.  To my
surprise, I saw that they’d somehow taken the roof of the motorcar clean off so
we could all get a better gawk at the people huddled inside.

I didn’t recognize the driver.  It wasn’t Zagger, but some
old pop in a grey uniform who hung onto the wheel like he’d drown without it. 
The King and Queen sat behind in the rear seat.  I caught my breath, though I
knew I shouldn’t.  The queen was a thing of beauty, her black fur cap perched
up high on her glossy hair, a little net veil hanging over her eyes.  She had
the tanned skin like Tarik, the sort that got all the society dolls rubbing
powders on their cheeks to match.  I decided she was too exquisite to be
married to the King. 

I skipped my eyes right over the King, and found the prince
sitting up alongside the driver.  It took me a moment to recognize him.  He
wore a dark hat and something rather like a military uniform, all brassy
buttons and medals and chains.  Every few seconds he seemed to remember he was
being gawped at, and he would give a feeble kind of smile and raise his hand to
the folks, somewhere between a wave and a salute.

“He’s too pretty to be the king’s son,” Pika piped up from
the branches above.

“What’d you say?” I gasped, but she just winked at me and went
back to goggling at the car.

The motorcade crawled closer.  There must have been hundreds
of horses surrounding the car, with hundreds of guards in plumes and blue
coats—the Honor Corps.  One horseman close behind the car didn’t wear the blue
and white uniform, but a black coat and a plain black coach hat.  I caught
myself grinning when I saw him.  Zagger.  I shouldn’t have been happy to see
him.  In fact, I kind of hated him.  But it made me giddy as punch to think I
knew him.  Knew his name.  Because I’d actually met the prince.  Not many folks
round the Hole could say that.

The hairs on my arm prickled.

Then everything turned to chaos.

The air splintered with a
cr-CRACK!
  I doubled over,
while everybody around me shouted and ran or fell on their knees.  A horse
screamed.  It took me a good two seconds to realize that the noise was a rifle
shot.  Then I couldn’t hear a thing but my own pulse, plunging through my veins
like a torrent.  Couldn’t move.  Could only watch.

The motorcar flinched, jerking to the side.  I couldn’t tell
why until I saw the driver draped over the wheel.  The prince leaned over him,
wrestling the controls as the car launched straight for the nearest wall.  At
the last moment it screeched to a halt and Tarik vaulted over the door, his
hands running red with the driver’s blood.

He took one look into the rear seat, then spun and charged
the crowd.  A glance back at the motorcar showed me the queen frantic over the
king’s body, guards swarming like bees.  My heart launched into my throat.  I
couldn’t tell if the King was breathing.  Suddenly I hoped he was.

I jerked my gaze away and searched out Tarik.  A score of
guards were all hollering and trying to block him in, and Zagger tailed him,
making a grab for his arms.  I’d never seen anyone look as angry as Tarik did
at that moment.  He stared straight at something, or someone, across the street
and up from where I stood, face white with rage, the wind tearing his hair.  I
followed his gaze and caught my breath.

A dark figure perched on the lip of a balcony rail, rifle
aimed straight at Tarik’s chest.

Tarik stood still as death. 

The guards all clustered around him, scanning the crowds for
the shooter, never realizing the prince had him in his sights.  Then without
any warning Tarik spun and grabbed a revolver from Zagger’s holster.  He aimed,
cold dark fury, and pulled the trigger.

But nothing was there to catch the bullet.  Nothing but
empty bricks, because the shooter had disappeared.

He’d just disappeared, the way only a Ghost could disappear.

Chapter 11 — Tarik

In the hallway outside my parents’ apartments, I couldn’t
hear anything that happened inside.  Besdin, the royal physician, had rushed
past me into the rooms only moments ago and a few raised words had trickled out
to me through the muffling wood of the door, then nothing.  And in the numbing
silence that followed, time slowed to sludge.

I leaned my head in my hands.  They still shook from the
adrenaline, but my breathing came steadier now, and the fear and rage tunneling
my vision had finally faded away.

“Will he live?” I asked, the words gritting through clenched
teeth, though I didn’t see how Zagger would know the answer any better than me.

Zagger gripped my shoulder briefly and said nothing.

From somewhere down the hall I caught a flurry of noises,
then Minister Von and Samyr appeared, hurrying toward us.

“Tarik!” Samyr cried, breaking into a run.

Her father strode straight past me into the king’s
apartments, but Samyr dropped onto the bench and threw her arms around my neck.

“Is he all right?”

I stiffened and turned my head away.  She only meant to
comfort me, but I didn’t want comfort.  I didn’t want to break down and
grieve.  I wanted to find the Jixy bastard who had shot my father, and I wanted
to kill him.

“Dr. Besdin is in with him,” Zagger said, answering for me. 
“But the driver is dead.”

Samyr released me and folded her hands in her lap, hiding
behind her chestnut curls like a chastised schoolgirl. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I couldn’t tell if she meant what had happened to my father,
or how she had hugged me.  I imagined she meant the former, so  I nodded.

“And it’s your birthday, too.”

“Stop,” I said.

The door swung open beside her and Dr. Besdin emerged,
wiping his hands on a black cloth.  He studied me for a few long moments, while
my heart hung suspended in my throat.  Finally he gave a quiet nod.

“He’s going to live, Your Highness.”

Relief washed out of me in one shattered breath.  Samyr’s
hand found mine, and this time I didn’t pull away.

“They want to see you,” he added, and disappeared back into
the room.

I exchanged a glance with Zagger as I got to my feet.  They
would be my father’s Ministers, who had trickled in one by one ever since the
Honor Corps and the medical brigade had brought my father back to the palace. 
I steeled myself and went into the outer apartment to meet them.

Six of them sat around the massive carved fireplace in
high-backed chairs, drinking my father’s spirits and smoking his cigars, as if
they were at a dinner party and not keeping watch over a wounded king.  I
knotted my hands and swallowed back the burn of anger in my throat.  Minister
Von waved me toward them.

“Tarik,” he said.  He never stood on ceremony with me.  “We
were just talking about you.”

Two of the other ministers hitched their chairs aside to
give me room to stand in their midst.  I complied, feeling, as I always did,
too young, too worthless in these men’s presence.

“What about me?” I asked.

“We are worried that you might have a mind to be a bit
unpredictable right now, but we want to be sure that you make an appearance
tonight at the gala.”

I choked back a laugh that didn’t feel quite appropriate. 
“The
gala
?  My father is lying in bed with a hole in his chest, and you
care about that damned
gala
?”

“Your Highness,” Minister Farro said.  “With all due
respect, that’s precisely
why
you need to make an appearance.”

“Why, so I can tell the people that I plan to kill one of
them?”

Minister Batar sputtered into his glass of brandy.

“As far as we know, the shooter acted alone,” Farro said.

“He was a Jixy,” I spat, turning on him.  “I saw him.  And
maybe you didn’t notice, but he
wasn’t
alone.  He couldn’t have been. 
No one can shoot that fast, or that precisely.  Someone else took Seelar down
with a revolver.”

Von and Farro exchanged unsurprised glances, but the other
Ministers apparently hadn’t even thought about how Seelar had died.  I
shuddered, trying to drive away the memory.  It took me a moment to realize I
was wiping my hands on the thighs of my trousers, as if I could still feel his
blood.

“We’re looking into that,” Farro said.  “The police are
interrogating as many of the witnesses as they can find.”

“Leave it to them.  It’s not your concern,” Von said.  “What
is your concern is that, as far as the people know, you opened fire on them.”

“I did what?” I cried, taking a step toward him.  “I took a
shot at my father’s would-be assassin.  I—”

“Fired a gun right over your people’s heads.  They didn’t
know what you were shooting at.”

“I wasn’t—”  I faltered, spinning away, dragging my hands
through my hair.  “Please tell me you’re not serious about this.”

“We’re serious,” the elder Minister Bell said, his voice a
mere quaver against the dull roar of the fireplace.  He tried to straighten up,
but the hunch of his back stymied him.  “You need to explain to the people. 
You need to apologize.”

“Ap…”  I dragged in a deep breath.  “I think we ought to
cancel the gala.  How can you even think of holding a celebration after what’s
happened?”

“This event has been in the works for months, Your
Highness.  People have gone to great lengths and great expense to make it a
memorable occasion for you.  You can’t simply dismiss all their efforts.  Your
father wouldn’t wish it.”

I glared at Minister Von, always so sensible.

“And what if the shooter comes back to finish the job?”

“I believe your father was the only target,” Farro said.

“Then you didn’t see the shooter aiming his rifle at me.”

Farro and Von exchanged glances.

“No,” Von said, quieter.  “I didn’t.”

“I did.”

“We’ll increase security around the premises.”