The Mortal Knife (21 page)

‘Nope,' Adam said cheerfully. He could live with that. He had a feeling that he didn't need to worry about Spike's software.

The whole school was still buzzing over lunchtime. The winners had to get photographs taken, so it was a while before Archie joined them in the library. He was trying to look casual but not doing a very good job. He was still carrying a huge board with his work attached for display. ‘I have to take this up to art after lunch but I thought you might like to see it.'

He waited for Spike to move his laptop and placed the board on their usual table. Dan raised an eyebrow and summed up what they were all thinking. ‘I don't think they'll be showing this on the news tonight.'

Archie grinned. ‘Doesn't matter. It's going into the gallery, isn't it? Luna Kazuna said she liked the style. You had to pick a style or artist, so I went for a mixture of pop art and manga.'

‘Pop art and perv art you mean,' Spike smirked. ‘You're lucky this won't be on TV. Your gran would murder you.'

Archie's grin faltered slightly. ‘Yeah, well, I probably won't tell my gran about the whole gallery thing. If she sees it and has another heart attack my mum will kill me.'

‘What style did Melissa do hers in?' Adam was desperate to know.

‘Oh, she went for the Cubists mostly. You know, Picasso's lot? Everything kind of chopped up and rearranged. But she likes Dali too, crazy surreal stuff. Eyes on your toes and all that.' Archie pulled a face. ‘It's not really my kind of thing but Ms Havens loves it.'

‘It's not my kind of thing either,' Adam confessed. He was just grateful he would never in a million years be identifiable, even if it ended up famous some day.

‘So what body parts
did
she get photos of?' Archie leered.

Spike snorted. ‘It's not like it matters. If she was taking photos she must have some weird private collection because she didn't use them for her painting.'

‘You're just jealous,' Dan piped up. ‘You wish
you
had been her muse.'

Adam could see this whole conversation straying into territory he would rather avoid. He'd never managed to find out if Spike had, as Dan claimed, had his eye on Melissa. It was probably better to cut and run while he could. ‘Yeah, I better go and see Melissa.'

‘She'll be in good form. Make the most of it, mate.' Archie grinned.

Adam rolled his eyes and left them to squabble. He didn't know where Melissa would be – probably not the art rooms as Ms Havens had gone out for lunch with Luna Kazuna. After ten minutes of fruitless searching it was almost time for the bell. Adam went outside, trying to think up what he was going to say about the painting. He wanted to sound grateful that she'd picked him as her subject but he didn't exactly want to lie either. He would probably stick to saying that he'd never seen anything like it before  … 

But when he saw Melissa a second later all thoughts of the painting were pushed out of his mind. He'd expected to find her grinning from ear to ear. Instead, as she came round the side of the main building and walked towards him, he could see that she was crying. He ran over to meet her and put his hand on her cheek. ‘What's wrong?'

Melissa looked up at him through tear-filled eyes. ‘I just got a call. My friend from work was on her way in this morning and she got killed. It was an accident. A total freak accident.'

Melissa was crying in earnest now. Adam put his arms round her and pulled her in close until her head was resting on his shoulder. He felt her shoulders shaking and her tear-stained cheek against his neck. She clung onto him almost fiercely.

She pulled away a minute later. ‘Sorry,' she whispered. ‘I just can't believe it. It doesn't feel real.'

‘It's OK,' Adam said, even though it wasn't. For a family somewhere it was never going to be OK again. He didn't want to ask but found he had to anyway. ‘What happened?'

Melissa shook her head, bewildered. ‘It was just a complete freak accident. She was on her way into work this morning and this guy in a lorry was unloading stuff. He had this trolley thing and the brake cable snapped and it rolled into her. It knocked her down into the road and a car  … ' She stopped and covered her mouth with her hand, the horror of it etched into her face. ‘She didn't do anything! She was just going to work. She's only there on a gap year.' Her face crumpled. ‘She was supposed to be going to university in September, to do fashion. She was so excited about it!'

Adam stared at her mutely.
I killed your friend
, he thought.
I didn't mean to. I wasn't unloading the lorry or driving the car. But I made Morta angry and now your friend and lots of other people are dead. And I know I need to stop her but I don't know how.

Melissa looked angry now. ‘I texted her earlier. I texted them all, to tell them about my stupid painting and the gallery. And nobody replied at first and they probably didn't want to because they didn't want to spoil everything. As if it matters. As if a stupid painting and a stupid gallery matters!'

‘It
does
matter!' Adam said. His heart was pounding. ‘Of course it matters. That's why we get to be alive! We're supposed to do the things that make us happy and  …  live! Don't ever say it doesn't matter because it
does
.'

Clotho's face swam into his mind; the gentleness there when she talked about her work.
Every thread  …  every single human soul is precious.
How many more threads were going to be cut on a whim? How much longer was Morta going to get away with this? Rage boiled inside him. He'd felt paralysed before, knowing that Morta was killing people and not knowing what to do about it. Until now the deaths had felt far away and although he'd felt guilty he hadn't seen the effect of the deaths. Now in the face of Melissa's grief  …  He wanted to kill Morta and Darian and whoever or whatever had been stupid enough to let them get into positions of power.

The bell rang for the end of lunch. Melissa wiped her cheeks. ‘I have to go to work tomorrow. It's going to be a nightmare.' She hesitated. ‘Can we do something tonight? Just go and hang out somewhere? We could go back to Petrograd.'

Adam bit his lip. ‘I really wish I could. I just  …  I can't. Not tonight. But I can ring you later.'

She shrugged but her disappointment was obvious. ‘Don't worry about it. I'll see you on Monday.'

Adam caught her hand as she turned away and when she swung back towards him he kissed her. She tasted warm and salty and he would have done anything to take her back in time; back to an hour ago when she was happy and excited and thinking about the future with nothing but hope. ‘I really can't tonight. I'm sorry.'

Her face softened. ‘It's OK. What have you got to do? It sounds serious.'

Adam tried to smile. ‘Yeah, I guess it is.'
I'm going to find a way to kill a Fate.

Adam had two classes after lunch. He spent French drawing angry doodles with a black marker and after getting some odd looks from the girl beside him he realised he was never going to make it through his last class without going mad. Instead he slipped out of school, running down the drive towards the bus stop. It was maddeningly slow but he didn't dare to swoop. With so many call-outs his family would be in and out of the Hinterland and could easily spot him.

His head was like a revolving door all the way home. There had to be something he could do. He needed to find out how to get rid of Morta. Failing that, he would have to confess to Nathanial. Tell him everything. Tell him about being a Seer; about saving people; about going into the Realm of the Fates and seeing Darian and Morta conspiring. Adam could be executed of course – that was the law – but what was one life in the face of all the innocent people who were dying because of the Mortal Knife?

The thing was though  …  it wouldn't just be him. His family would be destroyed. Nathanial might well face the wrath of the Concilium too. Would his closeness to Heinrich be enough to save him? And what about Clotho? She had risked everything to come and see Adam and warn him he was in danger. What if they got rid of her too? Who would be left to care? Lachesis would be indifferent; she just measured the threads, wove them into the Tapestry of Lights and forgot about them. A new Clotho wouldn't dare to challenge Morta. She would be able to carry on wielding her knife for hundreds of years.

There had to be another way. Adam ran from the bus stop back to the house, hopping impatiently from foot to foot until the electric gates allowed him into the garden. His death sense had been flaring on and off all afternoon. There was a good chance his father and brothers were on call-outs. He scuttled towards the front of the house, trying not to crunch on the gravel, until he could peer into his father's study.

It was empty. Adam eased the front door open and left it ajar, not daring to close it tight. There was no noise in the house but that didn't mean no one was home. A quick peek revealed that the downstairs rooms were empty. Elise and Chloe were probably out and Auntie Jo was more than likely in her room sleeping. There was no point waiting. Do or die.

Adam slipped into Nathanial's study, feeling his heart beating faster. They were all banned from being in this room without Nathanial – a rule so sacrosanct that Nathanial had never put a lock on the door, trusting that it would be obeyed. The real prize was in the bookcase. This copy of
The Book of the Unknown Roads
had spent a long time in Mortson hands. It was a heavy leather-bound book, packed with the collected history and wisdom of the Luman world. The book was a mystery. The words came and went, constantly updated by High Lumen with knowledge gleaned from Lumen as they passed through their own Lights at the end of their lives, returning only briefly to the Hinterland to pass on their Keystones and anything new they had learned.

Right now there was no time to admire it. Adam sat cross-legged on the floor and touched his keystone to the book's cover. Every copy of
The Book of the Unknown Roads
was different. Sometimes the book seemed alive and it seemed to sense the blood or keystone of the person holding it, part of what protected the knowledge of the Luman world. If a book was stolen by casual thieves, they would simply see an old book with blank pages.

For now Adam was simply hoping the keystone would make the book cooperative. ‘The Fates,' he whispered. ‘I need to know about the Fates. How I can stop a Fate. How I can get there to do it.'

The pages lifted and turned, as though a breeze was stirring in the room. Adam scanned the first page it stopped on, written in a shaky, spidery hand as though the author had been very old or frail. There was nothing useful there – just a brief description of the roles of the Fates, stuff he already knew. The next few entries seemed no more helpful at first; they were random anecdotes about some of the ancient Fates. But as Adam skimmed through the stories he found one interesting line:

Harsh words were exchanged and Atropos severed the thread of Lachesis. New Fates were duly appointed.

Adam stopped and stared. The writer's tone was utterly dispassionate; he might have been talking about replacing a bulb or inserting a new battery. The important thing was that the Fates' threads could be cut like anyone else's. It was a start. Of course, he had no idea how he was going to find Morta's thread amidst billions of others but one thing at a time. He didn't allow himself to think about what he was really preparing to do – to kill another person – or even whether he could do it. He just concentrated on figuring out the practicalities.

Unfortunately a swift search through the next entries only confirmed one fact: there was no way for Adam to gain access to the Realm of the Fates unless he had a token from their realm. Frustrated, he slammed the book closed and shoved it back into the shelf. His mind raced. Maybe there were some tokens left after the Summoning. Maybe Nathanial had a big bag of them sitting around somewhere, just waiting for times like this. Adam threw open cupboard doors, pulled books aside, checked the drawers in his father's desk. He even lifted the rug and checked behind the pictures, hoping he would find some kind of safe – but it was all in vain. He'd known it would be.

He sank back against the wall, forcing himself to breathe and just think
. If I can't get to their realm it's all over. Unless I can get her to come here. Maybe I can set a trap, save someone, let Darian catch me. They'll catch me and kill me but maybe I can get her first.
It was stupid. Even as he thought it, he realised how stupid it was; as stupid as telling Nathanial the whole thing. All it would do was destroy his family. And how could he cut Morta's thread without being in front of the Tapestry of Lights?

For an awful moment Adam felt like crying. It was pointless and pathetic but he felt
trapped
. All his good intentions, trying to save people, had gone so wrong. He'd managed to save a lot of souls before the Summoning. They were walking around today because of what he'd done. But Morta had killed so many more to exact her revenge and draw him out. How was he going to live with the guilt of knowing this? His throat was tight and he tried to swallow the ache away but it wouldn't go. He hadn't meant to hurt anyone. All he'd wanted was to help.

Angry at himself, he ground the heels of his palms into his eyes, rubbing them dry. He had to think – but not in here. He'd been here too long already. He took a quick glance around, hoping he hadn't moved anything, but the room still seemed calm and orderly, the way it always was. Adam stood by the desk and gently spun the antique globe with one finger. It had always been his favourite thing in the study when he was a kid. He closed his eyes and smelled the same familiar scents: old paper, beeswax polish, a faint, faint trace of Nathanial's aftershave. It smelled like safety and the life he used to have. Not quite fitting in with the Luman world, but not working against it, alone either.

He pressed his ear to the door, praying that the hall was empty. There wasn't a sound and he slipped outside, silent, easing the study door closed behind him. Adam rested his forehead against the cool wood, eyes closed, unable to let go of the door handle. Once he did, he was admitting defeat. He was admitting that there was nothing he could do and that Morta could go on killing people until she got bored of hunting the rogue. He was admitting that he had played his part in helping a mass murderer.

‘What are you doing, Adam?' Nathanial's voice was sharp.

Adam jumped. He let go of the handle and swung away in the direction of the voice. How long had he been standing there? He was so tired. ‘Nothing. I  …  I thought you might be in there. I was going to knock.'

‘Well, I wasn't but I'm going in now. Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?'

Adam hesitated. If he said no Nathanial would wonder why he was lurking in the hallway. If he said yes, he was going to have to think up something quickly. ‘No, it's OK. I mean, it was nothing important. It can wait.'

Nathanial sighed and came towards him, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘It's OK, Adam. I'm sorry I snapped. I'm rather tired with all these call-outs. I don't have much time now I'm afraid but I think I know what this is about. I was speaking to your aunt and although I'm a little surprised, if you wish to be betrothed we'll arrange it. I'm assuming you have someone in mind?'

‘Erm  … ' Just as Adam's brain needed to be working at full throttle, it was choking to a halt. ‘Not really. I mean, kind of but –'

‘Well there's not much point thinking about betrothal if you don't have someone in mind.' Nathanial was trying hard not to sound irritated but he wasn't quite succeeding. ‘Your aunt also told me that she had been  …  indiscreet in her conversation with you. About some of the circumstances around your mother and I's betrothal?' At Adam's nod he grimaced. ‘I'd appreciate it if you kept that information to yourself. There's no point dragging up old gossip. Let the past stay in the past. It's important not to harm Chloe's prospects.'

Adam nodded, feeling guilty all over again. Once his own part in recent events was revealed Chloe was going to be an outcast. They were all going to be outcasts. They would lose their home, their Keystones  …  The Mortsons would be too busy worrying about how they were going to eat to be worried about betrothals. He hesitated. ‘Can I help you? I know there are lots of call-outs. I could help?'

Nathanial shook his head. ‘Thank you but we're managing. It helps that Aron's of age now. If this continues we'll need to get Luc Marked too, although I'm not sure he's ready for it.' He bit his lip. ‘It can't go on like this. The Concilium will have to intervene.' He seemed to be thinking out loud because his face changed when he remembered Adam was still there. ‘I'm very tired Adam. Go and do your work. For school. Do it while you still can.' He stepped into the study and closed the door behind him hard.

Was it possible to die from guilt? Adam was beginning to wonder. It was growing and growing, like a toxic wave flowing through his veins, gnawing at the pit of his stomach, making his heart contract – and his fists clench. He felt sick. He went into the kitchen for a glass of water but to his dismay Aron was standing by the fridge, shovelling cheese into his mouth with one hand and bread with the other.