The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (77 page)

Apparently the guards had been told to take no account of my
title, because they marched me into the prison, stripped me of my suit and hat
and gave me an inmate’s grey grubs, and then deposited me in an ordinary cell
on the far end of the third floor.  It had a lav at the back and nothing else
but a plain cot, which felt oddly familiar and strangely comforting.  At least
they gave me a cell to myself, and the solid walls kept me from seeing if I had
any neighbors. 

The cell was situated just outside the guard station.  If I
stood at the door and craned my head just right, I could see the two prison
guards sitting and talking inside the room.  One was an older man, stiff-lipped
and mustachioed, the other younger and a bit rounder around the edges.  They
were keeping an eye on me, I could tell, though I wasn’t sure what they
expected me to do.  I wasn’t sure what I expected myself to do.  I’d never
liked being confined anywhere for long; even trains and motorcars stifled me to
madness at times.

For a few minutes I paced the small length of the cell, back
and forth, scanning every last inch of the room for any means of escape, but
the place was sealed tight.  There wasn’t even a window to let me pretend I
could get free.  Frustrated, I strode back to the door and lashed out, kicking
the bars as hard as I could.  The clash echoed through the prison block.

“Hey!” the older guard cried.  When he realized it was me
who had kicked the door, he stood up behind the counter and said, “Keep the
racket down, please, Your Highness.  Let’s not rile up the other inmates.”

“Other inmates!” I shouted, not bothering to mask my anger,
not caring if my voice carried through the whole of the cell block.  “What are
they holding me for?  What have I done?”

He leafed through some papers on the desk, shaking his
head.  “Not my business to ask.  Not when it involves one of your family.”

“So I could be imprisoned here for no reason whatsoever?” I
asked.  “Maybe I haven’t done anything wrong at all but someone wants to keep
me locked up.  Did that even occur to you?”

He set down the paper he was holding and frowned at me. 
“Please, Your Highness.  A member of the Court will be along soon to discuss
your arrest.  Just hold tight until then.  I am sorry, you know.”

“I know.  You can’t do anything about it,” I muttered,
hanging my hands through the bars of my door. 

The scene in front of me…shifted.  One moment I was staring
out into the prison block, stark and bright under the swaying electrical
lights, the next…the next I saw the seashore.  Nana holding my hand…Zagger
pulling me from the wall…

I jerked away from the door, pressing the heels of my hands
against my eyes.  It hadn’t been just a memory.  I saw all of it.  Saw the sky
and ocean, smelled the salt and smoke, heard the crash of waves and the cry of
gulls, felt the wind around my neck.  And all the time, in the back of my mind,
that sad sighing voice crying a song.

I’m
going mad.  I’m going utterly, barking mad.

I pulled out my pocket watch, staring at its shattered
face.  My mind flitted back to the night, not too long ago, when Hayli had
grabbed it from me and smashed her heel against the glass.  I could smell the
rain, feel the charge of the air from the oncoming storm…but I wanted to see
her face.  I
remembered
it, streaked with rain, the wind blowing her
hair across her cheek, but I couldn’t see it.  In my mind all I could see was
the broken watch.

I know what you are,
she’d said
.  I don’t know how
you do it, but I know you can draw down power to yourself.  But Shade, if you
keep doing it, this is what you’ll become.

A stomped-on watch?
I’d asked her, intentionally
obtuse.

She’d held out the watch by the chain, letting the gas light
reflect off a hundred broken pieces of glass.

Fractured
, she’d said, her voice thick. 

I hadn’t wanted to believe that she’d been on the verge of
tears, but I knew better now.  And she’d been right.

I slipped my hands back through the bars and let the watch
dangle from my fingertips, watching it sway and gleam in the cold light. 

“So, do you think they’ll bring them here?” the older prison
guard asked the other.

I froze where I stood, but my ears perked up, curious. 
Bring
them?  The mages?

“Doubt it,” the other said, rubbing a hand over his ginger
hair.  “Can you imagine?  I wouldn’t trust that lot in any kind of prison. 
That would be a bit of a disaster in the making, don’t you think?  And besides,
there’s too many of them.  We don’t have room for all of them.”

“What’ll they do with them, I wonder?”

“Round them up, take them out of the city,” the younger
guard said, disinterested.  “After that, I don’t rightly care what they do with
them.”

“You think they would kill them all?”

My breath snaked out.

“I think it’s none of my concern.  Far as I can see it, they
don’t much deserve to live.”

“You don’t think that’s a bit wrong, do you?” the first
guard asked.  “I mean, they’re just folks.”

“Folks who want to kill the King, remember?”

They abruptly fell silent, and both of them glanced in my
direction.  I made no motion, pretending that I couldn’t hear them.

The older guard dropped his voice, but not enough.  “What is
all this business, anyway?  Keeping
him
here?  What’s he done?”

“Not our concern, Gein.”

“They said
crimes against the Crown
.  The boy’s a
rogue, but he’s not a traitor.”

“Gein!  That’s enough.”

I pulled my hands back through the bars, pocketing the watch
as I retreated into the cell.  Time to go to work.  If what I’d gathered from
the conversation was true, things were so much worse than what Kor thought.  I
didn’t have time to play at diplomacy.  Those guards were talking about a
full-scale execution of my kind.  It was too late for words.

I climbed up onto the cot and stood on the metal bar at its
head, smoothing the blanket down where my feet had made wrinkles.  Then,
concentrating as hard as I could, I reached out my hand, feeling in my thoughts
for the cold iron bars of my cell door.  Once I had them in my mind, I closed
my hand in a fist and pulled back, hard.  The door clashed in its lock.  It
didn’t open; I hadn’t expected it to.  But it was enough.

I could hear the guards shout, the door of their station
slamming open.  Footsteps running toward me.  I held my breath, watching as they
approached my cell and smiling as their faces went white with shock.

“What the blazes?” Gein gasped.

He grabbed the cell door and shook it, but it held fast in
its lock.

“Did he get out?  How could he get out?” the ginger asked,
peering through the bars.  “There’s no way.  That’s impossible.”

“I didn’t see anything, did you see anything?”

“Nothing!  This is madness.”

Gein fumbled at his belt for his ring of keys.

Yes
, I thought. 
That’s right.  Open the door.

Finally he got the key in the lock and the door swung open,
and the younger guard paced into the cell, his baton poised ready to strike.

“Search that cell,” Gein said.  “I’m going to check down the
hall.”

He turned and strode away, muttering under his breath, and I
watched the younger guard creeping toward the back of the cell like he expected
me to jump out in front of him.

I waited until he turned away, and jumped out behind him.

He never even saw me before my elbow slammed into the back
of his head.  He reeled away and crashed against the wall, then slumped to the
ground in a heap.  I let out all my breath.  Now, to escape.  I poked my head
out into the corridor, but Gein had disappeared down the steps to the second
level, so I took my chances and exchanged my prison grubs for the ginger
guard’s uniform.  For a few moments I sat on the edge of the cot, staring down
at his face.

I’d sworn, once, that I would never take a living man’s
face.  There seemed to be something so wrong about stealing a real identity; it
felt like the worst theft imaginable.  But necessity had its spurs to me.  I
had to take the chance.  Just this once.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, as if it made any difference.

And then I became the ginger guard.  When my face matched
his, I dragged his body behind the cot, where no one would see it until they
came into the cell again.  That should give me enough time to get free.  My
stomach twisted.  There was a risk the other prisoners might remember seeing
the ginger guard walk past, when he would claim he’d been knocked out in my
cell the whole time.  But it couldn’t be helped.  Their testimony would make no
difference, anyway. 

I slipped out of the cell, locking it behind me, and as I
strode down the walkway, I tried to match the slightly ungainly way the guard
moved.  When Gein appeared coming up the steps again, I tried not to panic. 
Kept right on walking, setting my face in a furious scowl, while my heart raced
like mad.

“Nothing?” Gein asked.

“Nothing,” I said, hoping I could mimic the guard’s voice
for a few brief words.

“I checked down to the second level.  Can’t think where he’s
gone.  It’s just impossible.”

“Bloody impossible,” I said.  “I’ll alert the gate guards.”

“Right.  I’ll keep searching up here.”

I pressed on past him, trying not to rush too quickly down
the steps.  On the lower level of the prison, I met a knot of guards on patrol,
but they only nodded smartly to me as they passed me by.  When I reached the
prison entrance, I thought about walking straight out through the door without
a word to anyone, but then I caught the gate guard’s eye and realized I would
have to make some account for why I was walking out in the middle of my duty.

“Put the prison on lockdown,” I said, stopping by his desk. 
“We think a prisoner might have escaped.”

“Escaped?  Is that even possible?” the guard asked.

“That’s what I thought.  I doubt he’s gotten far, but I’m
going to check the yard to make sure he hasn’t made it outside.  I’ll be back
in a moment.”

The guard nodded and turned away to crank the alarm.  In a
moment the siren wailed out into the prison, and I could hear the flurry of
activity as the prison guards rushed to secure their floors.  I turned and
walked out the door.

As soon as I’d gotten to the old roads around the palace, I
shed the guard’s uniform jacket and pulled the suspenders off my shoulders, and
stomped through as many mud puddles as I could find to muck up the boots and
pants.  I looked like a street rat, now, but it was the best I could do.  I
only hoped it wouldn’t be enough to get me arrested. 

Chapter 11 — Tarik

I Masked to Shade once I got onto the streets, and headed
straight for the Hole.  When I arrived, I found the lads standing in a knot by
the trough, deliberating with Derrin.  Coins caught sight of me first and
hollered at me, startling the others into silence.

“Shade!” Derrin called, waving me toward them.  “Did you get
what you went for?”

I drew in a sharp breath, because the adrenaline and panic
of my prison break had made me forget, for the moment, about Zagger’s
betrayal. 

“No,” I said.  “Least, I got something else.  They’re going
to kill them.  I don’t know how they’ll justify it, but they’re going to kill
the mages.”

“Shade,” Jig said, and something about the way he said it
made me stop and turn to him.  “They copped Hayli.”

“What?”

He moved aside a little, and I realized that Zip had been
there the whole time, hiding in Jig’s shadow.  His face was streaked with
tears.

“Zip,” I said.  “What’s bothering?”

“She gave herself up, Shade,” he whispered.  “They wanted
the mages so she said she was the mage.  Think she was trying to get the slip
for the rest of the folks, like maybe if they got her they’d leave us alone. 
And it div’n even work.  Coppers took everyone.  Mages, regular folks.  I snuck
out, though.  They never even saw me.”

I crouched down in front of him, clasping his arms.  He knew
more than that, I was certain, so I just held my tongue and waited for him to
finish.

“They drug ‘em all off to the Station.  Heard ‘em say they
were ganna bring in cattle cars for the beasts.  There’s some kind of boffin-y
place outside Brinmark, I guess.  Think that’s where they’re headed.”

I glanced up at Derrin.

“This doesn’t concern you lot.  You could get arrested or
killed for coming with me.  Stay here and try to get as many folks to safety as
you can before those coppers come here.”  I met Coins’s gaze.  “Because if I
know what Kantian has been up to lately, he ratted all of you out to the
guards.  They’ll be here soon.  You lot had better not be.”

“We’re not leaving you, right?  You don’t have to do this
all alone,” Coins said.

I gritted my teeth and stood up, staring him straight in the
eye.  “I don’t want anyone else to die on account of me.”

“Listen to him,” Derrin said.  “We’ve all got jobs to do. 
Go get the skitters out of here.”

“You didn’t send them off yet?” I asked, frowning.

“Rivano and his lot are gone,” Derrin said, like I should
have known better.  “But this sounds like these guards make no account of who’s
who.  We just need to clear out the rest of the Hole rats.”

“What about you?” Jig asked.

“I’m going with Shade.  Now scram.”

“Here,” Jig said, tossing me the black bundle he’d been
holding in his arms.  “Figured you might want this back.”

Zagger’s coat.  I held it a moment, closing my eyes and
trying to make sense of the impossibility of Zagger’s betrayal.  It violated
every rule of my reality.  But given how my reality was fracturing all around,
perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me.

Finally I sighed and pulled it on, while one by one the lads
turned away, muttering to each other, but none of them had gotten more than a
few steps from me when a voice behind me said,

“Where do you lot think you’re going?”

“Kantian,” I said, and faced him. 

He stared at me, face haggard as though he hadn’t slept in
days.  His suit hung from his shoulders in rumpled folds, and in his right hand
he held a revolver close to his leg.

“Why don’t you just give up?” I asked him.  “Why are you
still here?”

“Why are you?”  He smiled, swallowing a laugh.  “They’re
coming.  Don’t you know that?”

“I’m not surprised
you
do,” I said.  “Since you told
Dr. Kippler the location of the Clan.  You sentenced them to death, do you
realize that?  They can’t fight back.  Not against the weapons those guards
have got.  So, fine job you did.”