“Aviators,” he said. Abruptly the transmission ceased. There was only the gentle flapping of the curtains in the morning breeze. “Two of them, from somewhere in the southwest. They are headed for the City of Trees on an errand for the new Aviator Imperator. They’ll be here around sunset.”
Giles was silent. Finally he leaned across the table and took the package of cigarettes from my hand. For a long time he stared at it in silence: the strange cursive letters, the staring eye within its pyramid. Finally he said, “This is too dangerous, Trevor. You’ll get us all killed.”
Trevor shook his head. “But this is what we’ve been waiting for! They’ll have news from HORUS, hopefully something about the war in the Archipelago.” Only the way he ran his hands across his scalp, crushing the white stubble there as though it were dried grain, showed how excited he really was. “We’re well-armed, if anything should happen.”
Behind me I heard a soft tread on the creaking floorboards. I whirled to see Fossa silhouetted in the doorway. His ears stood up: small pointed ears, hairless, the skin so translucent that I could see the web of capillaries beneath and their delicate inner channels. Beside him stood Miss Scarlet, wearing only a plain crimson shift: the gargoyle’s goblin shadow.
“News?” Fossa asked in his groaning voice.
“Aviators,” Trevor began, when Giles slammed his hand on the table, crushing the cigarette pack. Before Trevor could say anything else, Giles stood and left the kitchen, the door slamming behind him.
“Aviators,” Miss Scarlet repeated softly. She turned to me, her eyes wide. “Wendy, Aviators!”
“I heard,” I said. I didn’t like the sound of this any more than Giles did. “Where’s Jane?”
Trevor rubbed his chin. “Upstairs, I suppose.”
“No, she’s not. I went by her room earlier—she’s not there.”
“In the barn, then,” Trevor said impatiently. “Giles and I are going to be busy, getting things ready for them. I think you should make yourselves scarce—”
“You said sunset,” I interrupted. “I’m not going anywhere now. I want to talk to Jane—”
But Jane was gone. She wasn’t in the barn, or her room, or anywhere in the house; nor was she in the fields outside, where Fossa hunted for her. I even braved the basement again, peering under those rickety tables with their foul-smelling heaps of dung and offal; all for nothing.
“We have to find her.”
It was afternoon now, and I stood on the porch with Trevor, staring out to where the sun had just started to nick the tops of the distant mountains with gold. I smelled of dung and warm grass, from crawling around in the byre and hayricks inside the barn. My voice was hoarse from calling for Jane; I could not have told anyone, perhaps not even Jane herself, how her disappearance had upset me. I remembered that first night at Seven Chimneys: Jane’s cool hands smoothing my hair, pulling Cadence Mallory’s clothes over my feverish limbs; Jane’s mouth brushing my cheek, and how I had pushed her away. And since then I had pushed her away as well, acting as cold and churlish as when we first met in the City of Trees.
But now, as the light deepened from amber to the deep fiery gold of late afternoon, I began to grow frightened. If she should be lost (but of course that was ridiculous; Jane knew her way around the woods and ruined roads of Seven Chimneys as well as she had known the maze of cages at the Zoo); if she should be found and captured by the Aviators…
“I’m checking the woods again,” I said, and turned to run back across the overgrown lawn.
“ No .” Trevor Mallory’s hand clapped down upon my shoulder. “It’s too dangerous now—they could arrive at any time. I want you and Miss Scarlet and Fossa out of sight.” For the first time since my first visit to the underground gardens of Seven Chimneys, I glimpsed that other Trevor Mallory, the one who had spoken in soft insinuating tones of murder and revolution. “The Aviators think there’s no one here except for Giles and me. Fossa they believe is our servant. I don’t want to think about what they would do to refugees from the City of Trees—you’re putting yourselves and all of us in danger.”
“But we can’t just leave Jane,” I cried, yanking away From him. “What if they find her?—”
“Where can she be?” Miss Scarlet appeared in the doorway of the house behind us, wringing her hands. “Oh, this is my fault, I’ve been ignoring her, but she just doesn’t understand —”
“Go back inside, Miss Scarlet,” I ordered her, exasperated. “There’s nothing you can do—”
“There’s nothing you can do, either, damn it!” Trevor’s face grew flushed and he pounded the edge of the porch railing. “We’ve been waiting all winter for a chance like this, to talk to someone who has real news—”
“Wendy, please.” Giles’s gentle voice wafted out from where he towered above Miss Scarlet. “I’ll keep looking for her—it doesn’t matter if the Aviators know I’m here—and when I find her, I’ll make sure she gets upstairs safely.” His blue eyes gazed into mine beseechingly. He hated harsh words, any kind of disagreement: a true Saint-Alaban, and so much like Justice….
“All right,” I said, defeated. I leaned on the porch rail and looked out one last time, to where the ruined road wound from the inn toward the faraway mountains. Dread pinched at my heart: had she left us, really gone on by herself, to die or be lost in the wilderness? For the first time all day I felt tears welling in my eyes, but before anyone could see, I whirled and fled inside, my feet echoing loudly on the stairs.
A few minutes later Miss Scarlet and Fossa knocked on my door and let themselves in. We sat without talking, waiting, until at last another knock came and Giles entered.
“I can’t find her,” he said. Panic clenched at me; I jumped to my feet and began pacing the room.
“Are they—are the others here yet?” asked Miss Scarlet with wide, frightened eyes.
“Not yet. But I think it’s too dangerous in this part of the house. I want Fossa to stay with you—no, Fossa, I’m not going to risk having you where they can see you. There’s another room—I want you all to come with me, now. Hurry—”
We followed him down one hallway, then another, then up a flight of stairs into a part of Seven Chimneys where I had never been: a small bump-out that I had always assumed was a storage shed, but which proved to be larger than I had thought. Unused tables and armoires were shoved against walls webbed with mildew, and in the airless corridor creaky doors opened onto rooms without windows, some of them filled with more furniture, others empty of anything save festoons of cobwebs. I sneezed at the musty smell and wondered how long it had been since anyone had been back here. Years, it seemed; our feet left smudged impressions on warped planks thick with dust.
At last Giles stopped at a small door, so low and narrow, he had to stoop to pry it open. Inside I glimpsed stacks of old clothes and hangers suspended from a crooked rod. Giles ducked inside, rattling the hangers and shoving aside heaps of camphor-smelling linens. A moment later he motioned for us to come after him, and we did, Fossa and Miss Scarlet and me jostling each other in the dark crowded space until we reached a second, even tinier door that Giles held open for us.
“Welcome to the sanctuary,” he said in a low voice.