Disruptor

  “They argued viciously, but in the end, she extracted a promise. There were many Seekers by then, well-trained and good people, and she made the father agree to take Matheus far away from all of them. He and Matheus would spend most of their lives out of the world, in no-space, so that there would be both distance and time separating Matheus from everyone else.

  “But the promise was this: that he would never harm Matheus, that he would protect him with his life, because Matheus’s fate was his own fault. The father must live with what he’d done and what he’d turned his son into.”

  When Dex had found another spot, he stopped moving. “Once Matheus and his father had gone, the mother took her granddaughter, Adelaide, and brought her up as the rightful heir to everything my father and I knew.” Dex’s hands clenched into fists, and he pressed his knuckles into the wall. “And Desmond began his long trek through the circular realms of no-space. From then until the moment he found you there.”

  Dex held his hands out toward the wall, and then, in a pattern that was hard to follow, his fingers touched dozens of different locations, each of the spots he had hesitated over. After this display, he slid his hands into two of the nooks and pulled. The whole wall moved toward him. The intricate folds of rock shifted, interlaced, lined up, and created a new wall that curved in one elegant sweep into the tiny cell. It rumbled into place, displaying carvings that had been only rough shadows before.

  Dex stepped back to view his handiwork.

  Quin barely glanced at what he’d done. She was staring at Dex without knowing who she was seeing. Was he ancient? Was he modern?

  “You’re telling me that the father in your story, and his son Matheus, became the Dreads?” she whispered.

  “The name ‘Dreads’ came later, as did my father’s noble credo for himself and his son. Well, I should say that my father always had noble intentions, but attributing them to Matheus never worked very well.”

  “Your father and brother are the Old and Middle Dread.”

  “Yes,” he told her. “And my mother is Maggie.”

  Nott fingered the knife in his pocket meditatively. He’d stolen it from the training room, though “stolen” wasn’t really the right word, since he was given free access to all of the training weapons on the airship. Even the simple pleasure of thievery was ruined here.

  The knife was the smallest weapon he could find, and it fit easily into his trouser pocket, while leaving room for his hand. He pressed the pad of his index finger against the blade. The knife was used by the horde of brats who were now on the airship and so wasn’t particularly sharp. It would do in a pinch, though. He’d done damage to opponents with less.

  Most of the nurses had retired for the night. There were only two on duty now, a man and a woman in the odd white clothing they all wore. They were at the little desk at the center point of the curved hallway, clacking away at the computers, doing God knew what. The only important point was that they’d glanced over at Nott when he entered the hallway, and after that they’d ignored him entirely.

  This passageway skirted the training room on one side, though you couldn’t see into it from here. On the other side of the passage were the rooms with the injured Seekers in their hospital beds.

  He peered into the first room, where a woman lay asleep. The beds on the airship were, Nott had reluctantly admitted to himself, a luxury he’d never conceived of. They were much too soft, but when he slept on Traveler, he sometimes imagined he’d been wrapped in a cloud and was floating weightlessly through the night.

  But never mind the beds. The woman wasn’t hooked up to any strange contraptions. From this, Nott deduced that she must be nearly healed. Which means she’ll be up and about and ordering me around like a real Seeker soon, he thought sourly.

  An eagle had been drawn on the foot of her bed, signifying which house she belonged to. Maggie was inconsistent about the eagle Seekers. She didn’t hate them outright—she’d let Shinobu live. But would she want another eagle Seeker in the world? Maggie was certainly some kind of a witch, and witches were known to be fickle. Nott exhaled with uncertainty.

  He took another few steps down the hallway and looked in the window of the next room. A child was sound asleep there. The boy wasn’t injured—Nott knew because he’d seen him in the training room. He was probably put here to be near a parent who was still recovering. There was something like a tiger drawn on the foot of his bed—like a tiger except for the very long teeth protruding from its mouth. He was pretty sure Maggie was opposed to that house.

  He fingered the knife again and looked down the hallway. The night nurses were still ignoring him. How long would it take to slip into the room and permanently silence the boy? The child wasn’t a good fighter, wouldn’t put up much resistance, even if he woke up before Nott had finished his work.

  But one wouldn’t be enough. If he was going to do something that would make Maggie grateful, he’d have to think bigger. He looked down the curving passageway and tried to count the number of occupied rooms. If he were going to do this, he would have to find a way to distract the nurses so that he’d be able to get to all of the rooms before he was caught. But that was only half of it, wasn’t it? He’d have to find a way off the airship and back to Maggie, if he wanted to claim the prize of his helmet from her.

  And there was Aelred to consider. The bat had been injured when Maggie hit Nott with that evil black weapon of hers. Now Aelred was recuperating in a cage in Nott’s cabin. He’d have to get him off the airship too.

  Of course, Maggie hadn’t asked Nott to dispose of these Seekers. She’d asked him to bring John back. Nott frowned at his see-through reflection in the glass window, wondering why he must always be at the mercy of another, larger person’s orders. And why were those orders always confusing?

  John’s not about to go back to Maggie, that much is sure, he thought. Nott had nothing to offer Maggie, then, but getting rid of these people. That would surely count for something in her eyes.

  Inside the room, the boy rolled over in his sleep, as if he sensed Nott’s gaze upon him. Nott gripped the knife’s handle in his trouser pocket. He envisioned the steps he would take: slipping through the door, moving silently across the floor, throwing back the covers, plunging the blade in, raising it—

  Nott came over all ill and shaky, and he had to turn away. He leaned against the window, cursing himself. He was a Watcher, meant to put the rest of the world in its place. Sometimes that meant you had to kill people. The thought should have been thrilling. But…the boy might cry out, and he would stare up at Nott with big, dark, sad eyes…Nott swallowed nervously and pressed his hands into the wall to stop them from trembling. Was he actually trembling?

  You’ve become the soft modern child you look like in the mirror. You can forget about ever using your helm again.

  He stole one more glance through the window. The boy had thrown back his cover and was sleeping openmouthed and deeply, the way children did. Nott remembered that from a very long time ago, when his whole family had shared a few straw pallets in their tiny home.

  Choose what you are, Nott! Are you weak and useless, or are you a vicious Watcher? He set his jaw and gripped the knife again.

  “Nott, there you are.”

  Nott actually jumped. He dropped the knife back into his pocket and swung around to face John.

  “I was, I wasn’t…” Nott began. He was unexpectedly out of breath. He managed to gasp out, “I’m just standing here!”

  “All right,” John said, surprised.

  “It is all right,” Nott cried, struggling to appear calm.

  John looked at Nott curiously, but he was obviously distracted by something in his own head. “Will you walk with me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Nott answered quickly. He glanced behind them as they walked off, as if he might have left some visible trace of his intentions in the hallway, but there was nothing.

  He followed, musing for the hundredth time on John’s contradictions. He w
as taller than Nott and broad through the shoulders, and he was a fast and dangerous fighter. Nott would normally respect this, but he had a hard time thinking of John as anything but soft. John was too clean, for one thing. It was the kind of clean—down to the fingernails—that made Nott wonder if John had ever been dirty. Even when they’d been living on the Scottish estate, John had managed to keep himself scrubbed.

  Nott examined his own fingernails, each of which had a small crescent of black beneath it. You had to work hard in a place like Traveler to keep some dirt beneath your nails. It wasn’t just a matter of refusing to wash your hands; you had to seek out things that were unclean and dig your fingers into them.

  John, the fearsome fighter with the ladylike grooming habits, led Nott into the great room, which was empty at this hour. When he turned to Nott, it was obvious that he was consumed by some thought that was already galloping through his mind. Nott put his hands behind his back. Because, while he liked to think that he had “refused” to wash them, the truth was, he simply hid them from everyone when they got close.

  “Do you know who Shinobu is?” John asked, oblivious to the arguments taking place in Nott’s head.

  Nott’s face darkened. He’d told John and the Young Dread that he’d been with Maggie and the other Watchers, but he’d intentionally said nothing of Shinobu. Maggie had tasked Nott with convincing John that she was a good person and that John should return to her. If Nott had mentioned her torturing another Seeker, he thought his task would probably be much more difficult.

  “Red hair…and tall?” Nott said, as if stretching his memory.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve seen him. On that bridge we was all on. He slid down the sail.”

  Nott said this with some awe and hoped John took the hint that real men didn’t mind getting themselves dirty by sliding magnificently down sails.

  “Did you ever see him with Maggie?” John asked.

  Nott worked hard to keep his face noncommittal. “Mm?” he asked.

  “I saw him with Maggie,” John explained, “and I don’t think it was his choice.”

  Nott raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I’ve seen him not so much with her as at entirely different times.” Then he added, as additional insurance, in case John might later find him out, “Though, I can’t say as they were never together. How could I?”

  John paused, trying to parse this ambiguous answer. When he couldn’t, he asked, “Will you show me where Maggie is?”

  “You mean…you want me to take you to her?”

  “Yes. Can you?”

  It was Nott’s turn to pause. He looked up at John and examined him for some sign of a trick. John’s face wasn’t cruel or scheming; he looked sincere. He was asking Nott to take him to Maggie. How had that happened?

  Nott forced himself to smile, so that John would suspect nothing. This was a mistake. Probably on account of Nott’s blackened teeth, John flinched and took a step back.

  “What’s the matter?” John asked.

  “I’m—I’m smiling. Can’t you tell?” Nott asked. “Because I know where she is.”

  Nott pointed silently across the fortress to two Watchers, that night’s guards, who sat awake, lit by the dying embers of a fire. Everyone else was asleep, the uneven floor dotted with the black lumps of boys curled beneath their cloaks.

  John and Nott had arrived by athame outside Dun Tarm, from where John had followed the boy in through an opening in the wall. Now John stepped down onto the broken flagstones right next to Shinobu’s sleeping form. Nott was already moving silently toward the guards by the fire. He’d promised to distract anyone who was awake, to allow John to get Shinobu out—though John had a difficult time trusting Nott to follow through on much of anything.

  The moon shone dimly between thick clouds, and through the branches of the stunted trees growing up from the fortress floor, casting just enough light for John to see by. Crouching down, he put a hand to Shinobu’s chest. Shinobu was out cold, sleeping so deeply that John wondered if he’d been drugged. And he was wearing a focal. His face had the pallor of a corpse, and small forks of electricity crawled across his brow.

  From Maud’s training, John knew enough about focals to understand how dangerous and mind-altering it would be to fall asleep in one. How was Shinobu keeping a grip on his own thoughts at all? Perhaps he wasn’t, John thought with an unwelcome stab of pity.

  Quietly he sat Shinobu up and got his arms around Shinobu’s chest, as the taller boy’s head flopped to one side. With a mighty effort, John hauled him to his feet. Shinobu’s head fell in the other direction, causing his whole body to tense; his arms jerked out as if fighting in a dream.

  “It’s okay,” John breathed into his ear. When the spasm was over, Shinobu was dead weight again.

  Nott was halfway to the fire, and still the two guards had noticed nothing—they were huddled low for warmth, probably half-asleep. The slumped shapes across the rest of the fortress floor hadn’t moved at all.

  John took a deep breath, got a better grip on Shinobu, who was still a sack of concrete in his arms. But when John began dragging him, everything changed. Shinobu’s weight transformed from something insensate to something fully alive. He wrenched his head around to see who had hold of him.

  “It’s John,” John whispered, hoping he could be heard over the crackle of the focal. “It’s John. Shhh.”

  If Shinobu heard him, it was the wrong thing to say. His groggy cargo dropped forward like a slab of rock, pulling John off balance.

  “Stop!” John hissed. “I’m getting you out of here. Don’t wake them up.”

  Shinobu’s elbow landed hard in John’s ribs. He surged backward, throwing John to the ground beneath him.

  “She’s mending me!” Shinobu yelled. He could not have been louder if he’d been using a megaphone. “And you’re ungrateful!”

  All at once, the whole fortress was awake. Maggie’s supply of Watchers had been greatly diminished by the fight There, but a dozen black shapes got to their feet. Nott was waving his arms feebly to attract the Watchers’ attention, but they were entirely ignoring him and were looking directly at John.

  And there was Maggie. She’d been by the fire, and now she was on her feet and walking toward her grandson.

  John struggled to his knees, still clutching Shinobu against him. His captive pulled free and spun drunkenly to face him. Shinobu pulled back a fist to strike, and the two of them stared at each other, with no sense of recognition from Shinobu. Shinobu moved to strike, but before his fist connected with John’s face, he crumpled and flopped to the ground.

  “Stop! Do nothing.” That was John’s grandmother’s voice, speaking to the Watchers. The boys went still.

  John gathered Shinobu’s limp form against him once more and got back to his feet with all eyes, including Maggie’s, fixed upon him.

  “It’s all right, John,” Maggie said.

  She was dressed in the camouflage hunting outfit she’d been wearing during the fight There, her hair tidy even though she must have been asleep only moments earlier. She approached him slowly. “There’s no need to sneak around. We’re all here for you.”

  “Nothing you do is for me, Grandmother. Not anymore.”

  “John. You were making the wrong choice with those frozen Seekers. I acted for you, even when you wouldn’t act. I was removing our enemies.”

  Watchers shifted out of John’s path as he hauled Shinobu’s limp form toward the lake, keeping his eyes on the boys nearest to him.

  “No one is going to stop you,” she said reasonably. “I want you to decide what happens to other Seekers, John. That’s what we’ve been fighting for. So that you may make the right choices. If you want to take Shinobu, take him. He hasn’t been useful to me. Quite the opposite.”

  “Nott, come here,” John barked.

  He’d reached an area of open floor near the water’s edge. He let Shinobu slide down into a sitting position, and he drew out his athame, scanning the cl
osest figures cautiously the whole time. At a sign from Maggie, the nearest Watchers backed away farther, giving John plenty of room.

  “Come on, Nott,” John said. “We’ll go now.”

  Nott had come forward from the fire to stand next to Maggie. He regarded John, slowly shook his head.

  “Nott, come on!” John said sharply. He wasn’t going to leave the boy with this pack of murderers.

  “Don’t say ‘Nott’ like that,” the boy responded. “If I choose to stay, I will. I fit here. I’m one of them.”

  “You can come back for him anytime, John,” Maggie said. “I hope you will.”

  “Nott, come on! You don’t want to stay here.”

  “I do,” Nott answered.

  The boy crossed his arms, and John saw that he had become entrenched in his defiance. John had no means of forcing him, and if Maggie changed her mind, John would be easily outmanned. If he wanted to take Shinobu, he had to get out now.

  He tried one last time. “Nott…”

  “You ought to stay with Maggie too.”

  “That’s all right,” Maggie said to Nott, though her eyes remained on John. “He will. He’s gone soft on me, but it won’t last.”

  John spared Nott a final glance, after which he struck his athame sharply against the lightning rod. He drew a circle in the air beside him, and as the anomaly took shape, he watched the boys who were eying him. Then he hefted Shinobu’s dead weight onto his shoulder and stepped through the humming doorway.

  When he turned to look back, Maggie had crossed the fortress and was standing at the threshold of the anomaly, looking in at him.

  “We want the same things, John. You will see eventually and come back to me.”

  He turned from her and walked into the darkness. Maggie didn’t follow.

  “Prove it to me,” Quin said.

  “What?”

  Dex was touching, one after another, the varied circles that were carved upon the wall. Each circle displayed incomprehensible designs that looked almost mathematical.