Insidious Page 9

  Joy thought back to how all of this started—her being labeled a lehman, Ink’s chosen mortal lover, to cover up the fact that Ink had made a mistake in failing to blind her; that they had to keep up the pretense that the Scribes were infallible, able to be relied on to deliver signaturae without flaw or question, so that neither of them would be considered defective and in need of being replaced. Everything Joy had experienced in the Twixt during the past six months was with the single purpose of keeping the three of them alive. Joy looked again at the princess of the Twixt. Not just the three of us—four. As well as thousands more lost behind a forgotten door.

  Her head spun with implications.

  “Okay, wait, I understand that someone wanted to overthrow the King and Queen after they left with most of the Folk, and that you worried that they might go after your—” Joy gestured at the princess and struggled to use the word “—mom, and then everyone else seemed to have forgotten all about it and can’t be forced to remember. With you so far,” Joy said and took a deep breath. “But I don’t understand how come you weren’t affected or why you’re telling me.”

  The princess rose to her feet. “Inq and Ink were not affected because they are not Folk,” she said. “I made them with my own hands, my own magic, my own words—I am a Maker, like my family. My words have power. Everything you see here, every whorl of wood, every stone, every leaf, every drop of water and each grain of sand I have made while I have been imprisoned here.” Joy’s eyes drank in the whole of the pocket world, trying to imagine every detail created by hand. She tried to step off the grass that curled underfoot as if she were accidentally crushing someone’s art.

  “Whatever affected the entirety of the Folk left the Scribes untouched.” The princess considered Joy with interest. “Humans were not affected, either—you’ve retained your memories, unlike the rest of the Folk.” She paused, then amended, “Although I imagine that that is also true of those who escaped—the treachery was limited to the confines of this world, the world of the Twixt. It is why we can have this conversation at all,” she added. “Inq said that, being part-human, you would be able to remember.”

  Joy frowned. “I don’t know anything about any King and Queen,” she said. “Or any lost Folk, for that matter. This is the first I’ve ever heard of it.”

  “Not you,” Inq said. “Your stories—your myths and legends and literature passed down through the ages. I’ve read them. I know that they’re there.” She counted on her flawless fingers, “Genesis, Exodus, Homer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Chaucer, Yeats, Grimm, Oberon and Titania, Zeus and the Titans, Persephone and Hades, Enki and Ereshkigal, Osiris and Isis, Yul-ryeo and Mago, Inti and Mama Kilya, Dagda and Lugh.” She gasped for more breath. “Tam Lin, Olorun, King Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, Seelie and Unseelie fae, the fairy courts, the Snow Queen, Queen Mab, Morgan le Fey—any of this sound familiar?” Inq gestured at the expanse created by the Maker-Princess in her caged closet world. “Humans remember the past in a way the rest of the Folk cannot. It lives in your stories, which means it lives in you. That means that you can help me, you can do something.”

  Joy knew exactly what Inq wanted her to do.

  “You want me to help you find the traitors,” she said quietly. “And kill them.”

  “If it comes to that,” Inq admitted. “Of course, I suggested simply killing everyone on the Council years ago and forcing the door to open,” she said with a smile. “But it’s hidden down here from all but the Council, and we don’t know where it is. Besides,” she added, “Mother didn’t like it.”

  “I do not approve of killing innocents, no,” the princess said. “Even if there is a wickedness among them. It was the reason I chose to stay behind in the first place—too many innocents had suffered death on both sides.” She glanced at Joy. “I understand that you and I share this respect for both worlds.” She knelt and drew her hands through the brook, cupping them together, merging twin handfuls of water. “Once our peoples were one—that, too, has been forgotten. This was our world, a shared world.” She let go with a splash. The liquid clung to her fingers and fell like real water, the light sliding and splashing as she shook droplets from her nails. But the next moment, her hands were instantly dry. It was eerie and somehow horribly sad, how unreal and imaginary it all was. “I would like it best if we could identify the traitors, force them to undo that which they wrought, and thereby locate the door to our King and Queen so that the rest of our people can come home.” She opened her hand to Inq, and they linked their fingers together. “I would like to reunite my family, to see my mother and father and sisters again.”

  Joy squirmed around the all-too-familiar fantasy, the tug-of-war, love-and-hate dream of her mother and father getting back together, forgiving and forgetting and becoming a family again. Hers could never really be like that, but she understood the longing. But did someone have to die to make it happen? Worse than death—erased from existence as though they’d never been? Joy winced at the memory of falling into the hollow briar patch and realizing what she had done to the Red Knight.

  “Why not forget about ousting the traitors and seeking revenge and concentrate on finding and opening this door?” Joy asked. “It’s got to be somewhere in here, right?”

  “The courier alone knew its location,” the princess said. “And no one but the Head of the Council knows the courier’s identity, which was chosen in secret in order to protect and balance the Twixt’s many fractal loyalties. Whoever it was abandoned that task or forgot about it long ago. No one aside from myself and Inq has been here since.”

  Joy sighed. “But if you could find the door, you could open it.”

  The princess shook her head. “The door cannot open until either the Council members unanimously agree to open it—decreeing that it is safe for the others to return—or it will open automatically when all those on the Council have perished, allowing those on the other side to return to have their revenge.”

  “Return?” Joy said. “You mean like the Imminent Return?”

  The princess smiled. “It is one of the few memories that remain,” she said. “The old saying may have lost all meaning, but the words cannot be undone. Our traditions are endemic and still contain hints of the truth. Whatever happened to erase their memories, it could not undo it all. In our hearts, we know that our King and Queen will come back to us someday.”

  “Returning to Earth from somewhere behind a locked, lost door,” Joy said.

  The princess touched the glyphs at her breast. “Those are the rules.”

  The words made Joy’s blood pound. She was sick of rules! “Whose rules?”

  “Theirs—the King’s and Queen’s,” the woman said. “They created the Twixt by making the rules.”

  A cold splash shivered down Joy’s spine, her mind suddenly clear. “The King and Queen made the rules?” she asked. “They were the ones who made the rules of the Twixt?”

  The princess nodded sagely. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. That is why they are our King and Queen, the greatest Makers, and why all the Twixt must abide by their rules.” She gestured with a graceful hand. “We surmised that the only way the traitors could have conspired a coup was to somehow negate the First Edict, to forget their loyalty to the King and Queen—you cannot be loyal to that which you do not know exists.”

  “So find the traitors, find the door, open the door,” Inq said, counting them out on her fingers. “Presto! Instant Imminent Return.”

  “But if no one remembers them...” Joy began, then stopped at the expression on the tall woman’s face. It was a look of pain and loss and hope and despair that she remembered during her own Year of Hell, reflected a hundredfold. A wrenching war of What if? and What then? A prickle crawled over her skin, peppery and uncomfortable.

  “They will be able to set things right,” the princess said. “They can revise the rules once they return. Only, we must find
the way to bring them back.”

  But Joy was no longer listening, her attention riveted by that one sentence: They can revise the rules. Hope blossomed, fierce and fiery, blotting out everything else. She wouldn’t have to change. She could keep her body. She could get out of whatever Sol Leander had in store for her, whatever the Twixt was doing to her, whatever was brewing in her veins—it could stop.

  If she could find the King and Queen, then they could change the rules.

  “Okay,” Joy said softly before she knew it. “I’ll help.” She turned to Inq. “But on two conditions. First, no assassinations.” She couldn’t say “no killing” because even Joy knew not to bind Inq that much. The female Scribe nodded, and the princess looked on with approval. “And second, you have to tell Ink.”

  Inq’s face crumpled. “What?”

  “You have to tell Ink everything,” Joy insisted. “Tell him everything you’ve told me. No secrets. No loopholes. You have to introduce him to his mother. You have to bring him here and let him see the truth.”

  “No,” Inq said, watermarks flying over her skin. “No, Joy—you don’t know what you’re asking.” She looked to her mother with desperate, wide eyes. “He doesn’t know. He’s never known. It’s kept him safe...”

  “It’s kept him out,” Joy said. “It’s kept him alone.”

  Inq’s face flushed, a swimming montage of watermark glyphs. “No,” she said, looking close to tears. “That’s not true. He’s had me...”

  Joy shook her head, adamant. “That’s not enough,” she said. “It’s not enough and you know it. Not when she’s here, now, and he doesn’t know. “

  Inq spun angrily away, her hands curled tight into fists. Joy guessed that perhaps this was one of the few things Inq had kept for herself—the identity of their creator, their mother, who depended solely on her daughter to be her one confidante, her link to the larger world. Inq had kept the secret for her mother’s safety, but also for herself, something precious that made her unique, individual, different from Ink. But that was no excuse.

  “I mean it, Inq,” Joy said, pushing the point. She thrust out her hand. “Everything. Do we have a deal?”

  Inq scrunched up her face, petulant, stubborn. “I get to say how,” she said. “And I get to say when.”

  “But it will be soon,” Joy said.

  “Soon is a relative term,” Inq said. “But it will be before the Imminent Return.”

  It sounded as if that had always been Inq’s intent, but she’d never dared to think it could be this close. Joy mutely shook her outstretched hand. Inq finally took it. “Deal,” she said, giving Joy’s knuckles an extra squeeze, and then she suddenly brightened and beamed at her mother—the transformation was startling. “See? I told you she would agree,” Inq chirped, winking at Joy. “You’re so refreshingly simple.” She smiled and skipped toward the stairs with a spring in her step. “Now come along. Let’s get you up to speed before the Bailiwick’s tongue dries out.”

  It was a long moment before Joy figured out she’d been played.

  “We’ll return with news,” Inq said to her mother. “And some new company.”

  The princess smiled. “I look forward to it. Go, and be safe, both of you.” Inq and Joy left her standing at the edge of the stair as they climbed.

  Joy welcomed the familiar burn in her muscles as she followed the sound of Inq’s footsteps, catlike in the dark.

  “So you’re blackmailing me to help you find and kill an unknown traitor in order to free your mother, the princess, and reunite the Folk with their King and Queen,” Joy said aloud and shrugged. “You could have just asked.”

  Inq laughed, bell-like and genuine. “Now you know why I was so upset that you undid all my hard work when you took on your True Name,” she said. “That glyph armor I made for you was a great piece of work and your best protection against the rest of the Folk, including whoever is the traitor. Now my greatest weapon is both unprepared and unprotected, sworn to abstain from wearing any armor at all—brilliant. We could be up against just about anyone in the Twixt.”

  Joy refused to feel badly about the choice she’d made; the sacrifice of her magical armor was a small one compared to giving up Ink or her eyes. “Do you have a list of suspects?” she asked.

  “Kurt and I have some theories.”

  Joy paused. “Kurt knows?”

  “He’s originally human, remember,” Inq said matter-of-factly. “Now he’s mostly human-with-benefits, but, yes, he does remember. And he’s twice as cautious as me.”

  Joy snorted. “Only twice?” she said. Inq smirked. “Why don’t you have him kill whoever it is? He’d do anything for you, and you know it.”

  “Everything except go against the Council,” Inq said. “It is part of his contractual servitude to the Bailiwick, else he would have killed Aniseed years ago. Besides, we’re not talking about killing someone—you can erase them. I figure that’s got to be the best way to make sure that whatever was done is undone as completely as possible...if they don’t agree to undo it themselves, of course.” Inq said, acknowledging their terms of agreement. “No killing unless strictly necessary.” Joy felt a small pat on her arm. “Thank you for helping us, Joy.”

  Inq was haloed in the light at the end of Graus Claude’s tunnel, giving her a strangely benevolent glow. She looked unlike herself, something holy, divine. Joy averted her eyes.

  “You were threatening to blab my secret,” Joy muttered. “What choice did I have?” Joy didn’t like having the fact that she’d erased the Red Knight hanging like a Sword of Damocles over her head.

  Inq smiled knowingly. “You always have a choice,” she said. “But, knowing what you know, you would’ve said yes, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Joy said, continuing to climb. “Probably.”

  Of course, Inq didn’t know that Joy had her own reason for agreeing to find the King and Queen and open their secret door as soon as possible.

  Joy was about to change the rules.

  Inq stepped gingerly over the edge of Graus Claude’s teeth. Joy followed close behind, carefully keeping her hands away from the walls. She tried to ignore the creepy, freakish feeling as she stepped off of the deep stone stairwell onto the fleshy lower lip. Another ruby-red line of fire zipped past her feet. She shuddered as she hurried out onto the rug—the safe, normal, perfectly ordinary rug. Joy had never been so thankful to stand on a rug in her life.

  Kurt stood rigidly at his post like a soldier.

  “Take a seat, Joy. Breathe a little,” Inq said. “What is it my brother always says? ‘It only takes a moment?’ Time does funny things when you fold it over twice.”

  Inq walked with a self-satisfied strut that carried her across the room, where she stopped briefly to press a hand to Kurt’s cheek. Only his eyes moved, but they spoke volumes as she smiled.

  “Be sure she gets out okay,” Inq said. Dropping her hand, she spoke over her shoulder. “I formally withdraw from the Bailiwick.”

  Graus Claude’s mighty jaw trembled and began to contract. His tongue detached from the roof and slid like a pink python over his teeth. Kurt crossed the room in swift strides and took Joy by the arm, setting her quickly in her chair. He tapped the tablet, waking the screen, adjusted the keyboard, set the jeweler’s loupe in one set of his master’s slack fingers and strode back to the doorway, grasping both door handles in his hands. Before Joy had a chance to collect her thoughts or speak, he was gone.

  The jaw reset with a click. Graus Claude’s eyes faded from milk to ice-blue. He blinked like a yawn and set the eyepiece back near his face. Joy jumped in her seat as Kurt swung the doors open as if in midmotion. Graus Claude rolled a pearl between his fingers and palmed it as Kurt gave a perfunctory bow.

  “Yes, Kurt?” Graus Claude said without looking up.

  “Apologies for the interrupt
ion, sir, but the hour grows late,” he said in his surprisingly soft tenor. “Miss Malone said that she had an appointment this evening.”

  Joy nearly dropped her tablet. Her brain scrambled, trying to sort out what was real. Then she remembered: Kurt was human. He knew everything. And he could lie.

  “Oh, very well,” Graus Claude said with a huff and set down his jeweler’s loupe. “Ready the car. Miss Malone, I expect that you will commit your notes to memory as I will endeavor to commit my memories to these.” He gestured at the piles with two hands. “Pearls of Wisdom,” he said slyly. “Let them be not before swine.”

  “Excuse me?” Joy stammered, still collecting her swirling thoughts.

  “Matthew 7:6,” he said with a sigh. “I wonder whether I should abandon all literary references not pertaining to the funny pages.”

  Joy stood up quickly, stuffing the tablet and keyboard into her purse. Her fingers shook. She couldn’t even look at Graus Claude without imagining what lay under his tongue. And who. She forced a smile. “When you start quoting Harry Potter, then I’ll be impressed.”