The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (67 page)

“I wouldn’t touch that,” Tarik said.

I dropped my hand, turning a bit red.

“Though, if you wanted to take the samples from the
different microscopes and switch them around, I’m sure I wouldn’t stop you.”

I gawped at him, but he just smiled and kept right on
walking.  Stars, he was a rogue, that one.  A few tables away he stopped and
picked up a piece of paper, studying it a few moments until I joined him.  He
flapped it at me, letting me take it and get a goggle at it, but I couldn’t
make horns or heads of it.  There were lines and numbers and symbols I’d never
even seen scrawled all over it.

“What is this?” I asked.  “Dan’ even look like Cavnish to
me.”

“It’s scientific notation,” he said, taking it back.

I was just glad he kept staring at the paper, because I’m
sure I was blushing, feeling so ignorant.  “D’you know what it says?”

“Not a clue,” he said, smiling.  “Looks important though. 
Maybe I’ll keep it.”

He folded it up and tucked it into the inside pocket of his
suit jacket.

“You just pinched that…that…”

“Borrowed, really.”

“Your Highness?”

“You should call me Tarik,” he said.  “All my friends do. 
Well, some of them do.  Or, I suppose a few do.  It’s rather annoying, the ones
who don’t…”  He stopped and glanced at me, and must have realized that he’d
gone chunnering on when I had a mind to ask him something, because he kind of
cleared his throat and said, “Yes?”

I wanted to smile, but my heart was too sick for it.  “I
think they’re ganna do something to the mages.  I heard them talking…”

“Who, the scientists?”

I nodded.  “Dr. Kippler.  Your father.  I’m sorry, I dan’
want to sound treasonous.  But…they dan’ even think we’re human.  So they dan’
think it’s a crime to off us when we get in the way.”

He sort of laughed and arched a brow at me.  “I doubt that
very much.  They may not like your kind, but I don’t think they would execute
anyone for it.  I suppose herding you off to the corners of society is bad
enough, but at least you can live in peace.”

“Peace,” I snorted.  “And I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. 
They’ve done it before.”

The smile faded from his face.  “When?”

My throat tightened, and for a minute I couldn’t breathe
because I was afraid it would turn into a sob.  “When I was five.”

“Who…who did they kill?”

“My mum and dad,” I whispered.  I closed my eyes.  “And it
was all my fault.”

I couldn’t breathe, even if I’d wanted to.  My whole body
shook.  I couldn’t see Tarik, couldn’t see the lab.  All I could see were their
faces…their beautiful faces…

I cleared my throat, trying to drive back the burn of
tears.  Oh, God, sometimes I missed them so much.  Missed that great, drafty
old house and the little hunting hounds that Dad pretended to despise.  Playing
under the apple trees with my friend—I couldn’t even remember his name now—and
whispering to him that I had a secret…that I could fly.

I don’t even know how it all ended.  I just knew that one
day Mum and Dad never came home from a dinner party, and next thing I could
remember was Nanny taking me to the court house, standing in the back of the
room and watching the men in their red robes and wigs yelling at each other and
all the people in the gallery whispering hatred and accusations behind their
hands.  And my mum, standing in front of all those people, with all those faces
around her, somehow seeing me there at the back in Nanny’s arms.

I could still see the movement of her lips, shaping one
word, “
Run
.”

“Hayli,” Tarik said, startling me from my thoughts with the
gentleness of his voice.  “You were five years old.  How could it be your
fault?”

I clutched my arms tight against me.  Oh stars, I’d never
wanted to think about it.  How I’d run and run and run, always trying to get
away from the memory…

“Because I told the secret,” I gasped.  I couldn’t look at
him.  “It was their secret and I told it.  I told the secret!”

He drew a step away from me, finally dragging my gaze to his
face.  He looked stricken, more than I would have expected.

“Oh, God,” he said.  “No.”

“What?” I asked, still hugging myself to keep from shaking.

“I’m so blind,” he said.  “And an idiot.  I should have
known.”  He raked his hand through his hair and spun away.  “Get out of here,
Hayli.”

“But wait!”  He hesitated, so I took it as permission to go
on.  “Can’t you do something to help us?  What if they try to kill us all?  Who
will stop them?”

He stood perfectly still, head up, face cold and calm, a
studio portrait.  “I can’t help you,” he said.  “I’m sorry.”

I watched him stride away, wondering where he’d go,
wondering where I’d gone wrong.  What had I said?  How had I driven him away?

At the entrance to the lab he stopped and glanced back at
me, saying, “I’ll get that door open, so you’d better be ready to fly away,
little bird.” 

A minute later I heard him say, “Lift this lock-down
immediately.”

I raced to the door of the laboratory and found him talking
to some grey panel on the wall, which made me think he was rather blithering
crazy, until the panel spoke back and said,

“Who is this?”

He caught my eye and winked, then held down a button and
said, “This is Dr. Kippler.  If these doors malfunction one more time…”

I gulped down a laugh.

“Yes sir.  Immediately, sir,” the voice in the box said.

Tarik stepped away from the panel and headed toward the
steel door, me close behind on his heels.  By the time we reached the door, it
was sliding open all on its own.

“That door just opened by itself!” I cried.  “It's
like…magic.”

He looked down at me through his tousle of dark hair,
smiling rather sadly.  “It's Dr. Alokin's radio transmitter controlling it, I
think.  Not magic.  Just science.”

“Please…Tarik,” I said, because I knew he was about to leave
and I'd lose my only chance.  “You've got to be able to do something.  We've
got nobody.  Nobody's ganna take care of us.”

He withdrew a few steps, then hesitated, holding out his
hands.  “Look at me,” he said, his voice strained, lost.  “What do you think I
could do?  I'm not a hero.  I'm not your hero.”

And he was gone.

Chapter 1 — Tarik

I met Kor out in the palace gardens under the dark of the
evening, feeling strange to be talking to him as the Crown Prince, not as
Shade.  He even offered me a formal bow when he joined me, which made me feel
strangely uncomfortable.  Especially given the sort of conversation I meant to
have with him.

“Your Highness,” he said.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I measured him in silence a moment, folding my hands behind
my back.  “Ever heard of a fellow named Branigan?”

He smirked.  “The gossip-girl of the south-streets?  Of
course I know him.”

“He knows you too.  Called you Dreyden.”

Kor’s face blanched.  “Branigan?” he asked.  “You met with
Branigan?  Hell, kid, and you’re still alive?”

“You sound more worried about that than the fact he was
asking about you,” I remarked, turning my head aside.

“Yes, he knows about me.  Of course he does.”  He narrowed
his eyes at me.  “Where do you think he gets some of his so-called facts?”

I stared at him, horrified.  Horrified by his honesty more
than anything.

“You know how it is.  You have to give some to get some,” he
said.  “Half of what I feed him is false anyway, just close enough to the truth
to be believable.”

“You’re the grobbing mole,” I said, stunned.  “How could you
do that?  You worked for us.  You were on our side.”

“We’re spies, Tarik,” he said.  His voice sounded strangely
heavy.  “Once that’s in your blood, that’s all you live for.  You live for the
game.  Be one step ahead.  Dodge one more discovery.  Pull the blindness over
one more friend, and get away with it.  There is no loyalty.  There is no
friendship.  There is only the game.”  He shook his head.  “It’s what they make
us.  It’s what they make us do.  They teach us to run wild and then expect us
to stay on a leash of our own making.”

“You make the mistake of believing everyone like us is also
like you,” I said, vicious.

“You are,” Kor said.  “I don’t expect you to understand just
yet, but we’re the same.  Loyalty can be bought, bartered, traded for. 
Call
no man friend whose hands you can’t see
, isn’t that what Trabin always
says?  Everyone has a price.  You just don’t know yours yet.”  He sighed.  “But
you will.”

“I trusted you,” I said.  “Tell me why I shouldn’t tell
Trabin the truth about you?  It’s what he wanted to know, after all.”

He tilted his head back.  “Go on then.  Rat me out too. 
I’ve never betrayed you.  But I don’t think you’ll do it, because you know
there’s something wrong here, and you want to learn the truth.  And if you turn
me in, you’ll leave the streets forever and you’ll never get the answers you
want.”

I backed a step away from him, too numb to know what I
thought.

“You know you would have done the same,” Kor said.  “Maybe
you already have.  Or are you sinless in this regard?”  He turned away.  “Just
stay away from that man, whatever you do, hear me?  Stay away from him.  I
don’t want to go to your funeral.”

*  *  *  *

Zagger watched me suspiciously as I took a seat from him
across my study fire, burying myself in my little-used leather armchair with my
feet propped on the footstool.  He cleared his throat and stared at the fire,
then at me, then back at the fire.

“You’re getting old,” he commented after a while.

I smiled.  “You should talk.  Why?”

“When have you ever just stayed in for an evening?  You
can’t have sat there more than three times in the last five years.”

“Well?  I am tonight.”  I stretched my toes toward the heat
and closed my eyes, trying to drive away the knot of confusion in my mind left
by Kor’s confession.  “Never appreciated it before, I suppose.”

“Oh, I imagine you appreciated it.  Just never had the
patience to sit still and enjoy it.”

“You have a point,” I said, yawning. 

“So, I take it you didn’t find what you were looking for in
the Science Ministry,” Zagger said.  “Which—what exactly were you looking for?”

“Information,” I said.  “And no.  I didn’t find it.”  I
cracked open an eye and studied him curiously.  “D’you know Dr. Alokin,
Zagger?”

He snorted and leaned his head back.  “He’s my uncle.”

I frowned, because suddenly I realized that I didn’t know a
thing about Zagger.  He’d been there in my shadow my entire life, and never
once had I wondered about his family, or where he’d come from, or even if he
was happy being my bodyguard.  My cheeks warmed with embarrassment and shame.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked, and felt stupid,
because he knew that I knew I should have asked.

He shrugged.  “We’re not terribly close.”

“But?”

He frowned across at me.  “He’s all the family I’ve got.” 
That made him pause, then he smiled and added, “Well, all the blood family I’ve
got.”

I grinned.  “Does that mean you’re from Meritac?”  I
gestured at my own hair.  “I mean, you don’t exactly look anything like
Alokin.”

“Well, my mother was from Cromis.  Alokin was my father’s
brother.”

“Oh.”  I watched him for a moment, catching the strange
light in his eyes, like sorrow or something broken.  I hesitated to ask him
something so personal, especially when I never had before, but I couldn’t help
myself.  “How did you two end up in Cavnal?  What happened to your parents?”

He leaned back, staring at the fire, but nothing about him
seemed relaxed.  “We were political refugees,” he said, voice low.  “My parents
were executed by the state.”

“Good God, what for?” I asked.

Zagger flashed me a rueful smile.  “My father married a
foreigner.  A Cromner, for that matter.  It was reason enough for the
officials, anyway.  There are laws against it in Meritac.  They had me targeted
next—I don’t remember any of it, I was barely a year old—but my uncle took me
and fled the country.  He could have gone anywhere, with his skills, and being
fresh out of the finest scientific university in the world.  A lot of countries
offered asylum.  He brought me here because your grandfather offered to raise
me to be a royal bodyguard, in exchange for Alokin’s scientific work.  A lot of
the Guard are orphans, did you know?  I suppose it makes sense.  No family to
threaten means a guard is less likely to be blackmailed.”

I couldn’t get past his first sentence.  “They killed your
parents…because of their marriage?”

I knew that Cromis and Meritac had been hostile neighbors
for centuries, but…I never imagined the cost of that enmity for their peoples. 
To murder people for marrying—it was barbaric.

“There are punishments just as severe for less serious
crimes in other countries.”

“But Meritac…they’re our allies.”

Zagger snorted.  “What’s your point?”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t seem just.  How can we support
them if they treat their people that way?  How can we call them our friends?”

“Maybe they have a taste for our fine aluminium products.”

That didn’t satisfy me, though I knew Zagger was probably
right.  For all I’d studied and read and watched, the game of politics was
still a mystery to me.

“It’s a curious question,” Zagger added.  “Do you think it’s
our place to tell other nations what to do or how to live?  Even if what they
are doing is unjust?  Or, even if we do things just as terrible to our own
people?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.  I thought of Hayli, and her
parents’ terrible fate—how the word of a five-year-old had been enough to
sentence two nobles to death.  I said, bitterly, “I know we’ve executed people
for mixing magic and titles of nobility before.”

“Yes,” Zagger said, watching me closely.  “And just think of
how closely you’ve had to guard your secret.  Think of the laws that deny basic
protections to people like you.  I’d say we’ve got a lot on our own
conscience.”

“Should we fix our own bad laws before trying to fix anyone
else’s?”

Zagger shrugged.  “Alokin thinks we ought to fight injustice
wherever we find it.  I’m not sure.  Honestly, I’m not.  There’s a reason I
wear this uniform instead of that one,” he said, and pointed to the portrait
hanging over my fireplace, of my grandfather resplendent in his coronation
robes.  “But Alokin’s a dreamer anyway.  Head in the clouds.”

I thought of that fabulous lightning machine, all blazing in
purple and blue at the back of the lab, and hoped with a kind of mad fervor
that they’d saved it from the fire. 

“The man’s a genius,” I said.

Zagger snorted.  “He’s a quirk.  But he’s got brains.”

“You don’t happen to know anything about what’s going on in
the Garmon Labs, do you?  Alokin said something a bit strange, like he slipped
and mentioned some kind of project they’re working on.  I…I tried to get in but
I didn’t find anything that I could make sense of.”

I thought of the paper still folded in my suit pocket, but
didn’t have the energy to fish it out.  Just remembering the Garmon Labs made
me think of how I’d stumbled on Hayli there, and how hard it had been to
pretend…to pretend to be me.

“You snuck into the Garmon Labs?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“I didn’t exactly sneak,” I said.  “At least, not until I
got inside.  Anyway, it’s not important.  Do you know anything?  Has Alokin said
anything to you?”

“Those idiots don’t know what they’re messing with,” Zagger
growled.  I arched a brow, prompting him to continue.  He fiddled with his
uniform cuffs and said, “I don’t know any specifics, but Pont’s nephew used to
oversee the palace waste management, and he showed up sick as a dog one night
down in the servant’s hall.  He couldn’t say what he’d seen in their dustbin,
but it was enough to make him retchy.”

“Can you find him?” I asked.  “I’d like to talk to him.”

Zagger shook his head.  “Afraid not.  He ate his pistol
about two weeks ago.”

I flinched.  “Stars.  Is Pont taking it all right?”

“You know how Pont is,” he said, then flashed me a glance,
scrutinizing me.  I must have had my ignorance written all over my face,
because he twitched one shoulder and said, “He’s a closed book.  He seems to be
all right, though.”

We sat a few minutes in silence, listening to the rumble of
the fire mingling with the pulse of thunder.  My thoughts drifted, slipping
from truth to nonsense, again and again, but I couldn’t make myself stand up
and go to bed.

“Suppose I’ll have to do some more…research,” I murmured
after a while.  “Though they might get suspicious if I go back a second time.”

“Don’t try it.  I’m surprised they let you in the first
time.  They don’t let any outsiders in.  None.  Doesn’t matter if you’re the
King himself.”

“My father doesn’t even know what they’re doing?” I asked,
biting through the word
father
.

“He doesn’t care,” Zagger said, without malice.  “They show
him what he’ll be interested in—studies about diseases and cures, that sort of
thing.  As long as they keep feeding him that information, he leaves the rest
to them.  And as far as anyone knows, they run completely unfettered down
there.”

“It’s dangerous,” I said.  “I don’t like thinking what they
could be doing.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to try,” I said.  “One more time.  I’ve got the—”

I froze, the words dying on my tongue.  Out of the corner of
my eye, I could have sworn I’d seen a shadow move.  Zagger studied me, brows
draw in a silent question.  I jerked my gaze toward my shoulder and he followed
it, lips pursed, muscles tense.  After a moment he turned back to me.

“I don’t—”

I tapped my knuckle under my chin and he fell silent.  My
blood churned, numbing as ice, and my heart hammered emptily in my chest.  All
I could think, over and over again, was the sound of a rifle shot and my
mother’s scream.

“Your Highness,” Zagger said, getting to his feet.  “I think
I’m going to turn in.”

I slouched back, forcing myself to look indifferent, to
sound indifferent.  “Do as you like,” I said.

He moved out of my view, and I resisted the urge to turn
around and watch.  I listened to him prowling around the room for a few
moments, then he sighed and came back to his chair.

“Nothing?” I asked, feeling stupid.

He met my gaze and shook his head.  “Not nothing,” he said,
and held out his hand.

I reached out mine, and he dropped a button into my open
palm.  It was a plain thing, just a wooden disk with three holes for the
thread.  Not the sort of thing I or any of my servants would wear on their
clothes.  I frowned and twisted it around in my fingers.

“Where was it?”

“By the wall,” he said, nodding toward the corner where I’d
seen the shadow. 

“In here?” I murmured.  “How…”

No one could get in through the windows (or out—I’d tried
the first night I moved into these chambers from the nursery).  The bottom row
of panes opened, but they were barely a hand’s length across.  That left only
my own door, and Zagger’s door in his apartment that led into the servants’
stairwell.