Cyrus backed toward the door. The bear dropped to all fours and moved toward Cyrus, claws like flamingo beaks clicking as it came. He couldn’t see Antigone behind it.
“Antigone!” Cyrus shouted. “Jax!”
Small bells jingled beside him.
“Gone if she’s in there, lad,” Sterling said. “Wish I’d gotten here sooner, but these legs aren’t made for sprinting.” The cook patted Cyrus on the shoulder as the bear bellowed, stringing drool from a drooping lip.
“Let’s get this door closed and bolted behind us.”
“No.” Cyrus shook his head. “Tigs!” He stepped forward, but Sterling grabbed his shirt and held him back.
Cyrus wrenched himself free and staggered toward the bear. “Tigs!” he yelled. The big animal crouched, waiting.
Cyrus took a step to one side and braced himself, preparing to run.
“Hold, lad,” Sterling said. “You don’t have a chance. Ah, well, I hate to do it, may the animal gods forgive me.”
Cyrus glanced back. The bearded cook extended a four-barreled gun. The gun belched, and a sphere of white fire corkscrewed forward, erupting into the bear’s chest. The animal leapt into the air and then bolted for the cages like an avalanche of smoking fur. But Sterling wasn’t done. Firing at the circling vipers, he jingled forward until he stood beside Cyrus, and then, with a quick jerk, he brought the butt of the gun down onto Cyrus’s skull.
Antigone was standing beside an open window at the end of a long, curving hallway dotted with closed doors. The window behind her was three stories up. The doors went to … she didn’t know where.
Her heart was still racing. It hadn’t stopped since she’d gotten out of the zoo. Her face was still flushed. Jax had just managed to pull her into a cage. The bars had kept out the bigger animals — the smoking bear and the four-winged vultures — but the snakes … A heavy bone had been her only weapon, and her arms ached from swinging. Her hands were blistered. She should have died.
She slipped her Quick Water back into her jacket pocket. It still showed her nothing but darkness.
She’d told Rupert everything. But she didn’t care about Sterling. Where was Cyrus? He’d been ahead of her. He had to have made it out. But then where was he? She’d been stuck inside with Jax for almost an hour. Another hour had passed since she’d gotten out and no one had seen Cyrus.
A sick lump of worry sat in her throat. She shivered and slapped her arms, staring out the open window. She wasn’t cold. Even with the early storm wind, the air was warping with heat. The storm still hadn’t broken, but the sun seemed to be gone for good, swallowed by flickering clouds.
She wanted Cyrus. She wanted Dan. She wanted to sit beside her mother.
Behind her, a door opened and Jax stepped out beside Rupert Greeves. The boy’s face was still red, but rings of salt from his sweat had dried onto his cheeks and forehead. His clothes were soaked through, and he held a glass bottle full of water in one hand.
Greeves filled the hall. He scratched his bandaged jaw, eyeing Antigone.
“We need to go back,” she said. “Right now. Cyrus and Dennis might still be in there.”
Jax shook his head. “I looked everywhere. They’re gone.”
“What about the fireballs? Who was shooting those?”
“I was busy saving your life at the time,” Jax sniffed. “I was unable to locate the source of the fireballs.”
“You know,” said Antigone, “you don’t talk like a twelve-year-old.”
“Thank you,” said Jax, and he took a swig of water.
Rupert Greeves sighed. “Mr. Axelrotter, you’re free to go. I may speak with you again. Miss Smith, the Brendan has asked to see you. Walk with me.” His hand closed around her arm.
Rupert led her down the hallway and past the flight of stairs she and Jax had ascended.
After a few bends and a long curve, the hall dead-ended in a white paneled wall. Rupert pushed the paneling in and slid it to the side, revealing what looked like an elevator’s strange and distant cousin.
“You didn’t see that,” he said, “because I wasted time we don’t have following protocol, blindfolding you and spinning you around seventy-seven times before leading you here. Remember that if anyone asks.” He stepped in.
The sides and floor were brass wire mesh. Two thick cables ran down through holes in the ceiling and out of the floor. There were no buttons — only a large needled dial on one wall and a small lever beneath it.
“I thought we were in a hurry,” Rupert said, looking back at Antigone.
She stepped in beside him, and he slid the paneling closed. The needle on the dial bounced. Rupert twisted the casing around it, and then he pulled the lever.
The elevator — and one of the two cables — began to rise smoothly.
After a few moments, the cage bumped and began to climb diagonally. It shifted again, rocking gently as it moved horizontally, finally bumping again and ascending up another vertical shaft.
Antigone didn’t say anything. She was staring through the brass mesh, watching the overmortared backside of stone walls creep by, broken up by the occasional boarded-up door.
Rupert glanced at Antigone and then looked back through the ceiling and up the shaft. “Show respect and speak truth. And his name isn’t Brendan. That’s his title. His name is Oliver Laughlin.”
Greeves slid a panel open and stepped out of the elevator.
Antigone held back. “What do I call him? Mr. Laughlin? Mr. The Brendan?”
“Call him sir.”
Antigone followed Rupert Greeves down a polished hall with a black-and-white mosaic floor, into a sprawling room dotted with thick carpets and couches. There were no bookshelves. No books. No pictures. Intricately carved beams held up the low ceiling. A wall of paned windows looked down a sloping roof, past a row of titanic stone statues guarding the gutters, and then out over the lake. The glass panes quivered in the wind.
Rupert led Antigone away, around a long table and into the far corner of the room, where two walls of windows met. An old man was lying on a couch, piled beneath blankets. His empty eyes were focused on the ceiling. Two chairs sat across from him. His hair was thin and white, but long, reaching just below his pointed jaw. His skin was blotched and carved with deep creases. He was unshaven and had been for some time.
Beside the window, a boy with a sharp, freckled face stood with his back to the glass and his arms crossed. The boy. The boy from the Galleria, from the picture — the boy who nodded and everyone obeyed.
For a moment, his eyes were on Antigone’s, and then he turned to Rupert.
“Go ahead, Mr. Greeves,” the boy said. “He will hear you.”
Rupert quickly reported what Antigone had told him. Antigone watched the boy’s face sharpen and his brow furrow. When he spoke, his voice was crisp.
“Sterling and Rhodes are condemned because of what an Acolyte says that a porter said that he overheard?”
“No,” Rupert said. “Not condemned. Not yet. I will speak with them both when they’ve been found.”
The old man on the couch shifted, but his eyes were still on the ceiling. “Phoenix is coming.”
Greeves faced him quickly. “Yes, sir. Maybe. But the gates have been strengthened, the guards have been doubled, and the Keepers have been warned. All of my hunters will be out tonight.”
The Brendan waved at the chairs in front of him. “Sit.”
Rupert nodded Antigone into a chair, and then he sat.
The old man coughed, and then spoke. A rattle in his throat roughened his smooth drawl — like sand in butter. “It has been more than two decades since my brother defied the Order, two years since he last raised his voice to me. He is now ready, and he is unafraid. What of the tooth? What of the Smith children?”