The Fourth Ruby, Page 2

  The stolen artifact for the night’s Hunt was a ventriloquist dummy that had been in the ministry for generations. Normally it sat high on a shelf in the warehouse of unclaimed items behind the Lost Property Office, the undisputed king of what the ministry called the Graveyard. Someone long ago had named the clown King Leer, because of its creepy, pock-faced smile. Everyone called it Larry for short.

  A graveyard. Lord of the lost. In retrospect, the clues had been obvious, but Jack had missed them, and the rest of his night hadn’t gone much better.

  Following threads of red yarn from the clown’s hair and too much Old Spice from one of the wardens, Jack and Ash had traced a path through the stacked labyrinth of streets and courtyards to their present level. Most of it had been Ash’s doing. Jack felt like dead weight. He kept trying to sort out the data, but all he could see was noise.

  Section Thirteen.

  Freak.

  Ash’s titanium scout disc sailed across the arena, dipping way down into the mists gathering in the courtyard at the bottom. Jack tried to read its vector. He tried to hear the changing pitch of its whistle and predict its movement. He couldn’t. The professor had warned him many times: a misjudged scout disc could take an agent’s head off. At the last moment Jack ducked, letting it sink into the plaster wall behind him.

  Ash had thrown the scout because he wanted Jack to pull a vision from it. He wanted Jack to spark, as the ministry called it, and translate the light captured by the titanium disc as it flew across the arena into images—maybe see a way down, or see where the wardens were lying in wait in hidden alcoves. But scout discs were no fun for an inexperienced tracker. Their sparks had a nauseating spin about them.

  Jack steeled himself for what was coming and let his nerve endings sink into the cold metal as he jerked the disc from the wall, feeling the vibrations of the molecules. The low whistle of the disc’s flight came through first, rising to a scream. The arena spun madly below. Jack couldn’t stabilize it. He let go to keep from throwing up, and the scout clattered to the stones.

  Section Thirteen.

  Freak.

  Jack sighed and shook his head.

  Not wanting to disappoint Ash, he picked up the disc and tried again, this time slipping a hand into his jacket pocket and taking hold of the zed to calm his nerves. It worked. He managed to stabilize the spin. He saw the flight, and the data merged, moment upon moment until he had a full picture of the three bottom levels of the maze. A sentry stood like a statue in midstep, marching across a bridge at the center of the next level.

  Subtle.

  A flash of tweed appeared on the periphery. Jack shifted his focus and saw his least favorite of the wardens, half-concealed in an alley between two cottages, gargoyle face set in concentration.

  Shaw.

  The journeyman warden had never been fully convinced that Jack was not behind the entire Clockmaker episode. In the year since he and Jack had first run afoul of each other, Shaw had added several inches in height, though he remained as pudgy as ever. He was still considered small among the wardens, but big for a warden his age. Gwen often remarked that she shuddered to think what a full-grown Shaw would look like, or what he might be capable of.

  The moment Jack released the zed, he felt dizzy. He had to lean against the painted door of a fake cottage to stay upright—probably a lingering effect of the spinning disc. After a quick breather, he headed for an alleyway directly above Shaw’s position, hoping to catch the warden sneaking between levels, revealing the way downward. Jack staggered across the lane, pressed himself to the wall at the alley’s edge, and peered around the corner.

  No Shaw, only a tall cherrywood door at the very back. Jack crept up to it and eased the lever down. Unlocked.

  There was no stairwell behind the door, no ladder or dumbwaiter leading down through the maze, and no Shaw, either. Jack had discovered an anteroom similar to the room where he had left Sadie. It wasn’t part of the maze, and the door should have been locked, or covered by a facade.

  Strange.

  And stranger still, the room was occupied.

  Chapter Five

  JACK HELD THE CHERRYWOOD DOOR open and stared into the room. “Professor?”

  Edward Tanner, Jack’s teacher and mentor, stared back at him, seated in his wheelchair with his usual threadbare blanket across his knees. He wasn’t alone. A young man of Indian descent stood over him, wearing a worn black overcoat with far too many silver buckles and holding a gold cylinder and a glass vial of blue liquid in his open palm. He closed his fingers around the items and shot a fiery glare Jack’s way.

  Zzzap.

  An orange lightning bolt flashed at the forefront of Jack’s mind, more mental image than actual sound. When it was over, the professor and the young man had vanished.

  Jack glanced down at his hand, easing it away from the door handle. Had he accidentally sparked? That had not happened to him for a while, but his skills were on the fritz. How else could he explain it? The professor was up at Cambridge.

  Zzzap.

  He heard the orange flash again, or saw it, this time at the very back of his mind. It had come from behind him. Jack ran to the stone wall outside the alley and looked out into the arena.

  Nothing.

  “What are you doing?” Ash appeared beside him, yanking him back from the edge. “I told you to keep out of sight.” He took the disc out of Jack’s hand and slipped it into the leather satchel at his side. “Did you see anything?”

  “I . . . uh.” Ash wouldn’t care about the weird spark of the professor. Jack blinked, forcing his brain back to the Hunt. “A sentry. I saw a warden guarding the bridge at the middle.”

  Ash frowned. “Me too. You can’t miss him.” He started walking the other way, pulling Jack with him. “While you were staring at the obvious, I found a ramp to the next level, and I also figured out where they’re keeping Larry.” He slipped a pocket watch from his waistcoat and checked the time. “Three minutes. We’ve got to move if we want to win this.”

  Ash led Jack over a bridge and through a fake house to a tea shop, complete with a cacophony of smells that sent Jack’s tracker brain reeling. He pressed a shoulder against a wall of tins and it rotated up, revealing a sloping stone hallway.

  Jack struggled to keep up with the quartermaster’s stride as the two jogged down the ramp. “How did you . . . figure out where the clown is?” he puffed.

  “One word. Soil.”

  They reached the bottom, and Ash peered around the wall, out at the sentry. He sat back on his heels and twisted the wolf’s head of his cane aside, tilting a telescope that was stored beneath it into place. He leaned it out past the corner and motioned for Jack to press his eye to the lens. “Take a close look at our sentry. He’s got soil on his shoes. And he sure didn’t get it from that bridge.”

  Jack focused on the sentry’s wingtips. Sure enough, they were dotted with black soil.

  Potting soil.

  Jack had seen a flower shop in the spark from the scout disc, one level below the sentry’s bridge. But he had also seen a flower cart down in the misty courtyard at the bottom. He shook his head. “There are two. We can’t be sure which one.”

  Ash raised his eyebrows. “Can’t we? The soil on the sentry’s wingtips looks dry. No moisture. None on his pants, either. Sometimes the best clue is the one that you don’t see, Jack. What do dry shoes and pants tell us?”

  It took a few seconds, but the light finally dawned in Jack’s brain. “The mist,” he said. “If the sentry had been down in the courtyard with the flower cart, the soil on his shoes would be wet and clumped, and his tweed suit would be damp.”

  Ash touched his nose. “Now you’re getting it. Our sentry’s dry as a bone. So he hasn’t been to the bottom level. That means he’s been hanging out by the flower shop one level down. And I’ll bet that’s where we’ll find Larry.” He peeked out again, and Jack peeked with him. The sentry was guarding a ribbed drainpipe that ran from the street above, all t
he way down to the street below—the street with the flower shop.

  Ash sat back again, furrowing his brow. He pinched the collar of Jack’s coat, rubbing the leather between his fingers. “I’m gonna need your jacket.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Relax. You’ll get it back . . . maybe.” He checked his pocket watch and then held out a hand, snapping his fingers. “Quick, Jack. We’re almost out of time.”

  Jack complied, and Ash took the coat, shoving the cane into Jack’s hands in trade. He hauled Jack to his feet. “Now stay close.”

  Easier said than done.

  The moment the sentry turned his back, Ash took off at a full sprint. Jack watched as he veered to one side, launched himself off the stone rail, and draped the leather jacket over the warden’s basketball-size head. In one quick move, Ash dropped him to the pavers and tied the sleeves in a knot behind his neck.

  Jack ran huffing up behind, giving the warden a wide berth.

  “Quickly,” said Ash, snatching his cane back and pulling Jack to the rail. He showed him the flower shop down below. Potting soil littered the pavers outside. Right next door was a doll shop, and in the window, Jack could see the creepy clown dummy that would earn them the Tracker Cup.

  All they had to do was take it.

  “Quick as you can, before the sentry recovers,” whispered Ash, thrusting his chin at the iron drainpipe.

  The quartermaster wanted him to spark, to draw images up the drainpipe like soda up a straw, and see if there were any other wardens waiting down there to ambush them. Jack glanced back at the sentry, who was tugging at the jacket covering his face. The zed was still in the left pocket, well out of Jack’s reach.

  “Hurry up.” Ash pushed him rather roughly toward the drainpipe. “This is what you’re here for, tracker.”

  “Right. Sure.” Jack grabbed the pipe and tried to spark.

  Static. Naturally. But what did it matter? Time was running out anyway.

  “Nothing,” he said. And then came the lie. “I mean. It’s clear. I don’t see anybody.”

  Ash needed no other prompting. He hopped over the rail and shimmied down the pipe.

  Two wardens jumped out of the shadows and grabbed the young quartermaster the moment he touched down. Jack winced. He should have known better. Ash broke free, but the strap of his satchel snapped in the struggle and fell to the cobblestones at his feet.

  Meanwhile, Jack heard footfalls behind him. The sentry was free, rushing his way. With no other choice, Jack hopped the rail and slid down the pipe, narrowly escaping the big teen’s grasp. He landed and stumbled back, halfway between the two wardens and the doll shop. He had a clear shot at the clown.

  The quartermaster kicked his satchel, and it flew between the wardens, landing a few feet away, so that a copper sphere rolled lazily out and settled between Jack’s sneakers—an electrosphere. He swept it up and yanked out the ring and chain, spinning up the magnet inside.

  Ash pumped his fist. “Yes! Take ’em down.”

  The electric charge building in the copper made Jack’s palm tingle. He’d have to throw it soon, and he’d have to put it right between the two wardens if he wanted to take them both out of commission. He hauled back his arm for the throw and something—someone—caught his wrist.

  Shaw stepped around to Jack’s front. He wrapped his other paw around Jack’s fist and gave him a tea-stained grin. “ ’ello, Thirteen. I’ve been waitin’ for the chance to do this.”

  Jack heard Ash shouting. He heard thumps, pounds, and grunts. But all he could see was Shaw’s gargoyle face, inches from his own.

  The electrosphere fired its charge. Shaw clenched his teeth, absorbing the residual shock without letting his grin fade in the slightest. The rest of it coursed through Jack’s body. The scant light that reached that deep into the vertical maze went out.

  Chapter Six

  JACK AWOKE amid a full-body convulsion that nearly shook him out of the wrought-iron chair he was sitting in. For a moment, he had no idea how he’d gotten there. Then it all came back.

  The drainpipe.

  The electrosphere.

  Shaw’s ugly grin.

  Jack looked around and realized he was still on the second-to-last level of the arena maze, sitting in the orange glow of a streetlamp at a mock street café, next to a mock flower store and a mock doll shop. The creepy clown dummy that had leered at him from the window was gone. So were the whispers and the drones.

  All was silent.

  Ash came strolling toward him, Jack’s leather jacket hanging from his hand. He laid the coat and his wolf’s-head cane on the table between them and pulled out a chair, twirling it backward. “All clear. Was it, Jack?” he asked as he sat down.

  Jack looked down at his hands. “It could have been.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “It didn’t matter. We had to do something.” He shrugged. “But I couldn’t spark.”

  Ash picked up his cane and ran his fingers over the bronze wolf’s head. It was old, scratched and scarred. He had not been the first to carry it, not by far. “A lot of trackers have entered this arena before they could spark,” he said, still examining the cane. “Most of them, actually. But none of them would have hidden that fact from their quartermasters. You lied to me, Jack. How could you?”

  The quartermaster rolled his neck, and Jack could see that it pained him. His cheek was starting to swell. Jack got the feeling Ash had tried to save him from Shaw and taken a beating in the process. He wanted to say something—thank you, I’m sorry, anything—but he couldn’t find his voice.

  Ash looked away, down at the mist filling the bottom level. QEDs were already dismantling the mock courtyard, picking up the stones and carrying them off. “I’m disappointed, Jack. I don’t think I can trust you anymore.” He stood, twirling the chair back into place. “I’m bringing Sullivan in for the third round. Maybe he and I can salvage this together. Two quartermasters, the way it’s been done for the last ten years.” He turned and walked away. “You’re off the team.”

  Chapter Seven

  THE FOUR TRACKER FAMILIES each had a small seventeenth-century manor situated around an underground cul-de-sac known as Tracker Lane, looking down on four gas lamps and a carved stone fountain that had recently been repaired. High above the houses, the upside-down roof of the inverted Keep tower jutted down through the cave ceiling, with its eight upside-down gargoyles snarling up at the stalactites.

  Two of the four houses—House Fowler and House Shepherd—stood empty. The eleventh trackers of those houses were gone, and the twelves were off caring for the exiled thirteens. House Tanner remained occupied, but only part-time, since the professor spent most of his time at Cambridge. Only House Buckles was full. They were prisoners, Jack included.

  Jack especially.

  He left the Great Stair—a broad wooden staircase that spiraled around the entire Keep—and hurried down the short lane to the cul-de-sac, not stopping to see if the professor was home. He didn’t pause in the wood-paneled hearth room of House Buckles to say hello to Sadie, either. If she started interrogating him about the Hunt, he’d be stuck there all night. Jack did not even stop when his mother peeked out from the kitchen to offer him a post-Hunt snack.

  “I made you a plate. Cold roast and beetroot.”

  “Beetroot? Really, Mom?” His mother had lived in America his whole life, hiding from the ministry. One year back in the Keep and she was as British as ever. He pressed on through the front hall. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You need to eat, Jack. You’re skin and bones.”

  “I’m fine.” He was already three flights up the stairs. She asked about the Hunt, but he pretended he didn’t hear, slipped into his father’s room, and closed the door.

  A candle flickered on the nightstand, the one his mom always kept burning—the only light in the room. Jack didn’t mind. The gaslights overhead would have shown him too much. He sat down by the four-poster bed and took his father’s
hand. There were tubes running into it. The doctors had put tubes everywhere—little ones running into his dad’s arm, larger ones running up his nose and down under the covers, and a great big one stuffed into his throat. Jack sometimes wondered how his dad would react to the big one if he woke up.

  Then he would chide himself for thinking if.

  He opened his other hand and looked down at the zed resting in his palm. At the top of Big Ben, Jack had found his father, John Buckles the Twelfth, drugged and unconscious, kidnapped by a psychotic arsonist. And the moment he had pressed the zed between their two palms, his dad had spoken to him, offering encouragement. It was only later that Gwen had assured him his dad had never woken up. What Jack had seen and heard had been a sort of spark. The zed had acted like some kind of neural bridge.

  It had never worked again.

  Jack had tried. Over and over. He had pressed the little sphere into his father’s hand every single night since the rescue. And he had tried to spark off its stone and gold, trying to see who else had used it. Either way, he saw only darkness. Once in a while, his nose bled too. He had gotten used to that part.

  Each night, holding the zed in one hand and his father’s limp fingers in the other, Jack prayed for him to wake up, but that prayer remained unanswered. Each night, a tiny part of him, a part that Jack despised, wondered if that was for the best.

  The Ministry of Trackers had strict rules about the four tracker bloodlines. They had strict rules about everything, but the bloodline rules were especially so. The thirteenth generation was never to enter the Keep—or even learn of the ministry’s existence. Jack had broken that rule, with a little help from Gwen. But that was only one of his two great offenses. The other was being born at all, and that was an offense he shared with his sister.

  Section Eight of the ministry’s regulations forbade members of tracker families from marrying, for fear of what the confluence of tracker bloodlines might produce. Jack’s mother was born Mary Fowler, a daughter of the tracker Joseph Fowler the Eleventh. Not one to be left out of the family business, she had joined up and become a star quartermaster—partnering with the tracker John Buckles the Twelfth. Except their relationship had not been strictly professional.