The Giant's Almanac Andrew Zurcher (books to read fiction TXT) 📖

her leave. It wasn’t like her to miss feeding of any kind, even when she was plainly in a temper, or so preoccupied that she hardly said a word.

‘She’s probably cross that you got summoned to the Sensorium,’ Padge said. ‘She thinks of the Riddler as her own personal creature.’

‘Yeah, the way a cat thinks of a mouse,’ said Russ, joining in. ‘Mine for playing, mine for – eating!’ He stabbed the chicken on his plate with a sharp thrust of his knife. His miming was so exaggerated that they all laughed, even Fingal.

That afternoon, Dina didn’t show up at any of their usual joint lessons. Fitz enjoyed having the Officers to himself, and felt he learned two or three times what he normally did.

No one mentioned the events of the night before, the fight on the lawns, or the prisoner in the tower. That is, no one mentioned it until he got to the Jackery, late in the afternoon, and he found the Jack sitting under his plane tree, his eyes closed, with his hands on his crossed legs.

‘Do you know that man, Sassani?’ asked the Jack. He hadn’t opened his eyes, and Fitz hadn’t even yet sat down. ‘The one with the cane.’ The ground was cold beneath his legs as Fitz settled on the grass, and he wrapped himself in his arms while he thought about what to say.

‘No,’ he answered at last. He knew he could trust the Jack – Arwan Abramanian, the big man who had held the dying Aslan in his arms. The Jack was a friend. It wasn’t that. He just didn’t want to talk about Sassani – not now, not ever. ‘I don’t know him. Not really. He came to my house once, in the night, and scared us. But Mr Ahmadi – the Master, I mean – helped drive him off.’

‘Do you know what he meant, when he asked you if you knew who you are, who you could be?’

In the pleasure of the morning’s lessons, Fitz had forgotten it completely. Now it rushed back to him, so suddenly and fully that he felt overwhelmed. He didn’t answer.

‘What he knows, what you know, what each of us knows – we must be careful. Sometimes knowing too much is dangerous.’

Ignorantia sapientia. There is wisdom in ignorance.

‘I know he thinks I am the answer to some sort of prophecy, that I look like someone that the Heresy wants very much. He knows that I am about to come of age. I think he didn’t want me to come here, because of that, and I think now that I’m here he wants me to leave.’

‘And do you want to leave?’ asked the Jack. Now he opened his eyes, and, as always, they were already focused directly on Fitz’s own.

‘No,’ Fitz answered. ‘I’m happy here. I’m safe here.’ The fear he had felt the night before, during the fighting, rushed back through his veins, hollowing them. Don’t tell me I’m not safe here.

‘For now,’ said the Jack. ‘But remember that, while one is often safest in the eye of a storm, still, one is surrounded by a storm.’

That night, after Fitz had gone to bed, he was woken from a light sleep by the sound of stones hitting the west window. His first thought, as he came to, was that only Russ could throw so far, and so he was surprised, on lifting the window latch and looking out, to see Payne in the courtyard below. She lifted her face to him – for a moment, catching the light of a nearby lantern – and then turned away, walking fast into the shadows towards the Jackery.

At first Fitz assumed it was a case. Accordingly, he dressed fast, slid down the stairs hardly touching his feet to the steps, and threw open the tower door a full five seconds before he dared – as it closed – to flit through it. But no one shot at him, not Dolly with her crossbow, not Padge with his unerring sling. He half expected Payne to ambush him, but as he circled north and then by the lower Commissary back towards the Jack’s upper court, he saw exactly nothing out of the ordinary: no Offs lingering, no Prents stalking the gables, no Serfs standing sentry outside forbidden entries. By the time he’d reached the Jackery, a chill had started to tingle on the back of Fitz’s neck. Something had to be wrong.

Then a voice hissed him from the west range, just under Russ’s window. Fitz dropped to a crouch, keeping his head low.

‘Get over here, newbie.’

It was Padge. He was waving his arm in exaggerated but almost invisible strokes of welcome, in the darkest shadow of the court’s south corner.

Fitz scanned behind him, guessing it was a trap, but found nothing.

‘It’s not a case,’ Padge whispered. ‘Don’t make me call you again!’

Staying low, Fitz scurried over. Padge pointed up, where Russ’s window was edged with soft light. Someone had blacked it out with a blanket. ‘It’s Russ’s birthday,’ he whispered. Fitz ducked into the staircase, climbed to the first floor, and pushed through the open door.

The little room – no more than a closet with a bed, really – was almost full of Prents. Only Fingal was still missing – and Dina, of course – and when Padge pushed in behind Fitz, he realized he’d been the last to arrive. The room was softly lit by an oil lamp sitting on the desk, which burned unevenly, creating sudden and spectacular flares, and at other times almost sputtering them into darkness. The conversation, by contrast, though barely audible seemed to be moving in a pretty good flow, everyone jumping in on everyone. And conversation imitated life: there was so little space in the room that they were all essentially draped on one another. Fitz took a place in the hollow of Navy’s arm, and listened.

‘Is Fingal coming?’ whispered Dolly to Payne.

Payne shook her head. ‘He said he’d rather sleep.’

‘Good,’ said