The Cracks in the Kingdom Page 32

  “Just —” she said, and she breathed in hard, trying to catch ahold of her smile again. “Just watch the floor, all right? I’ve already washed it.”

  She stepped past Elliot, reached for a paper towel, and got down on her hands and knees, wiping up the water droplets.

  Elliot said, “I’ll do that.”

  But his mother, still on the floor, had caught sight of the toast crumbs under the table, and was lunging for the dustpan and broom.

  It was almost eight o’clock.

  Elliot left her there, ran upstairs, and closed his bedroom door.

  The ring was still in his sock drawer. It was a simple ring, gold. He slid it onto his finger and looked at it doubtfully. This was somehow going to enable him to communicate with the members of the Royal Youth Alliance? Now he glanced around his small bedroom. Holographic images were about to appear in here? That seemed even less likely.

  He waited, uncertain, in the middle of the room. Then it occurred to him that if he was going to see the others, they’d be able to see him too. Maybe even see his room?

  He looked down at himself. He was wearing the old T-shirt he always wore to bed, and trackpants.

  Ah, well. They’d live.

  Might as well straighten up his room a bit, though.

  He grabbed the dirty clothes from his floor and tossed them in the closet, rammed a pile of schoolbooks back into his backpack. There was a pen leaking ink all over the carpet. He wasn’t sure what to do about that, so he turned to the bed and was pulling the cover over it when the ring tightened around his finger.

  It was quite a squeeze, sort of hurt a bit. He touched the side of it, the way Keira had explained, more to stop the pressure than to answer.

  Next thing, the outline of Princess Ko appeared, standing in his wastepaper basket. She was scratchy in parts, but slowly filling in. He shifted the wastepaper basket — it seemed disrespectful to leave her standing in it — and said, “Hey,” but Princess Ko was gazing hard over his head. He looked up. Nothing there.

  Within a few minutes, Keira, Samuel, and Sergio had also appeared in a sort of cluster. They each seemed to be suspended and filmy — just their faces and shoulders, no background. So he guessed they couldn’t see his bedroom after all. Straightening up had been a waste.

  The images were hazy but were quickly filling in, and each flickered now and then, so they all had an agitated look.

  “Can everybody hear me?” Princess Ko said. She wore a close, concentrating frown.

  There was a confusion of responses. It seemed pretty remarkable that here they all were, clustered around Elliot’s wastepaper bin, talking at once. The images were pale, colors odd, but their voices were clear, with just the faintest static. Elliot thought of his mother downstairs. She’d hear this. She’d come upstairs, baffled, and throw open the door.

  “This!” enthused Samuel, his image flickering alarmingly. “This is beyond all imaginings of possibility! As to a —”

  “I have exactly three minutes,” Princess Ko interrupted, her image leaning forward a little. “Only speak when I address you. Elliot?”

  “Yep?”

  “Have you figured out how to get through a crack?”

  Elliot looked back at the wavering shape of the Princess.

  “Well,” he said. “I think I have.”

  The Princess nodded. The others exclaimed.

  “Hush,” said the Princess. “Did I address any of you?”

  “I found the answer in one of the accounts that Samuel stole,” Elliot explained. “Turned out Madeleine had figured it out at the same time, which —”

  “You read beneath the block-out?” Samuel cried, his image flickering again, his eyes huge. “But how?! As to a petal in a paper clip, so did I struggle and lament and weary and sweat and ache to achieve such an end! Whereas you …”

  “Used a spell from the Lake,” Elliot said.

  “Magic!” cried Samuel. “Oh, but I cannot foretell how my heart does anguish, Princess, for long, I swear, long did I —”

  “All right, Samuel,” the Princess’s eyes remained focused above Elliot’s head. “Take it easy. Magic was probably the only solution. The only magic you have access to is Olde-Quaintian, and you would be a bigger fool than you appear if you tried to grapple with that. Kindly desist from beating yourself up. It is unseemly. Elliot, congratulations. Tell us the details when you get here. In the meantime, have my family been informed of the schedule for their transfers?”

  Elliot hesitated. He’d been framing the words — an explanation of mirrors and lights, how you used them, why he thought they’d work on major cracks; he even wanted to explain the sound of Madeleine’s voice in the darkness — but now he was supposed to explain the details when he got there?

  Got where anyway? She expected him back at her dumb palace?

  The Princess was waiting.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said. “Madeleine says she’ll get the letters to your family.”

  “Very well.” The Princess turned her head. Her face, wavering in Elliot’s room, still held the intensity and frown. “Keira. Anything of note in the new boxes of documents?”

  There was a long pause during which Keira’s head tilted slowly.

  “We have no time for pauses and tilts! Kindly answer!”

  Now Keira raised her eyebrows.

  “You really think I’m going to find something useful in those boxes?”

  This time the Princess paused.

  “Maybe,” she said after a beat.

  “Well, then.” Keira smiled faintly.

  “Did you?”

  “No. Just a whole bunch of racing statistics.”

  “Keep reading.” The Princess’s image swiveled. “Samuel, have you found anything further in the archives?”

  Samuel offered a respectful bow.

  “My dear and worthy highness,” he began. “As to a bellyache in —”

  “Have you?”

  “No.”

  The Princess turned smoothly.

  “Sergio. Have you acquired a detector?”

  Sergio, whose eyes had been bright and lively throughout the conversation, now faded a little. “Well,” he began. “Not exactly. There is the beautiful difficulty —”

  “But you will,” said the Princess. Her voice rose. Elliot looked at his bedroom door, but at that moment the vacuum cleaner started up downstairs. Surely his mother had nothing left to vacuum?

  He turned back to the Princess, who was still talking. She was leaning forward, her image crackling and breaking up as if collapsing under the intensity in her voice. “My security agents are in the room with me right now.” She waved a hand behind her. Elliot looked and saw his own bedroom window, fields stretching out to distant trees. “They are listening to this conversation. You will recall what they once said about you behind your back, Sergio. Do you know what you will do? You will get that detector, Sergio, and prove them wrong.”

  This was the first time anyone had mentioned that overheard conversation. There was a deep silence, then a stir of static, everyone glancing sidelong at Sergio.

  Sergio’s face seemed oddly twisted. He was trying to gather his usual smile. He managed it, and beamed at the Princess. “I will,” he promised. “I will get it!”

  “I know you will.” The Princess swiveled, trying to see each of them. “I have set up an official tour of the Kingdom for the Royal Youth Alliance. This will be our cover as we move between the crossover points. We commence at the White Palace, where we will collect Prince Tippett.”

  She explained the itinerary of press conferences and provincial activities to take place between the gathering of family members.

  The vacuum cleaner droned and clunked downstairs. Elliot listened vaguely. He was thinking there was not much chance that this tour would go as smoothly as the Princess’s voice seemed to suggest. He wasn’t even sure if his mirror-and-light trick would work, but anyhow, before they could try it, they’d have to find the cracks — and unseal the
cracks — and they could only do that with Sergio.

  Sergio was a good guy. He could dance, he made great chocolate. He was loyal, passionate, and he meant well.

  But seemed unlikely he’d ever track down a detector.

  The Princess was still talking.

  Downstairs, there was an abrupt silence, a dragging sound, and the vacuum started again.

  More to the point, Elliot thought, there was not a chance in hell that he himself was going on this tour.

  If his father got home today — he remembered Madeleine’s certainty, and changed that: when his father got home today — well, once that happened, he, Elliot was only going to leave his side when his dad brushed his teeth. (He was too enthusiastic a brusher — blizzards of toothpaste foam. Elliot had never enjoyed that about his dad.)

  He’d get word to the Princess about the mirror-and-light trick, and then he’d respectfully withdraw from the RYA.

  He was done with it.

  “Is this all clear?” Princess Ko demanded.

  Elliot saw the others nodding in their various ways, and he added his own nod.

  There was a crackle and then the Princess was addressing Elliot again: “Any news on your dad?” she said, her voice a little different.

  “We’re expecting him back today,” Elliot said.

  “Wonderful,” the Princess said, both warm and distracted, then: “Time’s up. Over and out,” and her image faded.

  The others glanced around uncertainly, and then, one by one, each faded too.

  Elliot touched the other side of the ring to cut his own transmission.

  He looked around the empty bedroom.

  He listened to his mother, switching off the vacuum cleaner again. This time she seemed to be done. There was the rustle of the cord being wound back up, and the hallway closet opening and shutting. Her footsteps down the hall. The laundry door. Water running. Her footsteps again, slower this time, and a faint, low, sloshing sound. Seemed she was walking with a bucketful of water. Must be planning to clean something else.

  He opened his bedroom door, then paused, imagining his father standing in this doorway.

  Today.

  His dad would be standing here sometime today, looking around, asking what Elliot had been up to —

  Sometimes an idea is so sweet it aches.

  Sunlight was picking up the dust on Elliot’s bookshelf; his posters were peeling from the wall. The windows were smudged and smeared.

  He thought again of his father in the doorway, then he ran downstairs to the laundry himself, got his own bucket of water.

  * * *

  Half an hour later he’d done the window, and he was taking books from his shelf so he could give it a good dust.

  He was late for school, but his mother hadn’t said a word. They were both working silently, her downstairs, him here. He kept glancing back at the sparkle of the window. Should do that more often, he thought. Clean glass. Makes the sky a brighter blue, fills the room with brighter sun.

  It seemed shameful now, the idea that he’d almost let his dad see a dusty window.

  Something was biting his finger. He shook his hand a couple of times as he worked. Kept on biting. That was hurting —

  He looked down and saw he was still wearing the ring. It was calling him again. Ah, the Princess wanted to know the details after all. Must have got impatient. Good. He touched the side of it, and an image unfurled in his bedroom. Right beside his desk.

  Looked like a cutout girl for a moment, then as he watched it seemed to color itself in. It flickered a little. It was not the Princess.

  “Keira,” he said.

  “Elliot.”

  There was a pause. Keira had her messy, ruffled look, the one he preferred. New patches of acne on her cheeks.

  “Have you got a minute?”

  “Sure.” He kicked his bedroom door closed, and turned back to her.

  “You really figured out how to get through a crack?” she said, with half a smile.

  “Just hold up a mirror and a light,” said Elliot. “And wait. I think that’s how it works anyhow.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, the crack here’s too small so I can’t be sure, but …” He shrugged, looked sideways at the streaks on his door handle. Now he’d got started with this cleaning thing, he didn’t want to stop.

  “I have to tell you something,” Keira said, her voice steady and careful, as if it were walking on a wire, and if it stopped it would lose its balance.

  “Okay.”

  “About why I got chosen for the Royal Youth Alliance.”

  Now he turned from the dusters and buckets and faced her directly.

  “My mother,” she began, “you remember I mentioned my mother?”

  “Sure do.”

  “She’s a Hostile. She has been all my life.”

  Elliot chuckled. “Come on,” he said. “You wouldn’t be on the Royal Youth Alliance if …” Then he stopped. “Wait. Are you saying they don’t know about this? You’re a Hostile yourself? You’re undercover on the Alliance?”

  “They know,” said Keira. “It’s not that. Here’s how it went. About six months ago, my mother got arrested. Remember I told you she met a man? Using her stupid self-help book? Well, turned out he was undercover for the Loyalists. He made her fall in love with him, gave her jewelry with a — with a listening device embedded in it — and trapped her that way.”

  Elliot was shaking his head slowly.

  “The necklace,” he said. “The one you threw into the snowbank.”

  “Too late,” she said. “My mother was in prison by then — awaiting execution. The only reason she’s still alive now — is a deal that the Princess made with me.”

  “Join the Royal Youth Alliance and your mother stays alive?”

  “Right.”

  “But why would the Princess do that?”

  “Oh,” Keira shrugged. “I guess she thinks I’m dangerous. She knows I’m dangerous — I’m actually better at the tech stuff than most people. I grew up making listening devices for my mother — for the Hostiles. That’s why it’s ironic — that my mother got caught out with —”

  Keira’s voice was crackling, the image was flickering and blurring. She seemed to drag herself together.

  “The Princess thought it would be smarter to have me working for her — owning me — than let me loose. They didn’t have any proof against me, see? They just knew my reputation. Only, she can’t seem to bring herself to give me anything useful to do. Just all that tiny, tiny printed paper, so I’ve got a constant headache.”

  “She wants to punish you,” Elliot guessed. “She takes your background too personally.”

  “Our Princess has some limitations,” Keira said.

  Elliot was still staring.

  “No wonder she didn’t want you to take my dad’s listening device home with you,” he remembered. “She thought you’d take it to the Hostiles.”

  Keira smiled faintly. “There’s something else,” she said.

  There was a crackling, a pause, more crackling.

  Keira’s image straightened. She angled herself so she was facing the spot just to Elliot’s left.

  “Mischka Tegan,” she said.

  He flinched. Normally he cleared a space around that name before he used it, or heard it. Prepared his defenses. Having it spoken so clear out of the blue, felt like a sucker punch.

  He breathed through it, then spoke carefully.

  “That’s the woman who betrayed my dad,” he said. “What about her?”

  Keira’s face changed — became disheveled — then she cleared it again, and spoke clearly.

  “It’s the name my mother used,” she said.

  The room had taken on a slow, lethargic spin.

  Elliot tried to smile. “What are you saying?”

  “When she went undercover in Bonfire, the Farms,” Keira said, “my mother called herself Mischka Tegan. She met Jon and Abel Baranski, and worked with them until
the night they realized who she was. It all fell apart then — as you know. She called in her people — they dealt with the situation. She came home, started work on a different project — and that’s when she was betrayed herself. Another irony, I guess — and arrested.” Keira’s mouth was twisting oddly. “The Princess doesn’t know that part — I mean, she doesn’t know about my mother’s connection to your father — they don’t know that she was Mischka Tegan — she used an effective disguise then. I’m sorry,” she said. “Everything that’s happened to you — to your family — to your dad … it was all my mother’s fault. I’m so sorry.”

  Elliot was stepping back from her image. He kept backing up until he thudded against the door. That spin to his room was getting faster and more reckless.

  “Don’t be sorry,” he found himself saying, some remote instinct for manners kicking in. “It’s not your fault. You’re not your mother. But listen, can we not talk right now? I just need — my dad’s coming back today, so I need to clean. Talk later, okay?” His hand was on the side of the ring, ready to cut her off.

  “Elliot.” Keira’s voice rose clear again, urgent now. “I’m telling you this for a reason. I had to tell you now. I couldn’t stand seeing you — so happy — hearing you say your dad is coming home.”

  Anger came at him like an iceberg.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m sorry if my happiness offends you. Bye, Keira.”

  “No!” Keira’s image lunged toward him. A mad rush of tears was careening down her cheeks, which he found both bizarre and infuriating.

  “What is it?”

  “He won’t come home today,” she said. “Your dad is not coming back today. They’ll delay again. The agents will call and say they need more time. A few more days, they’ll say. Then they’ll say that again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Elliot.” Keira was crying properly now. “Your dad is never coming home. He died the same night your uncle died. My mother saw him die.”

  Now Elliot felt a surge of clarity. The anger vanished.

  “Well, that makes no sense,” he said, clear and precise. “We found my Uncle Jon but there were no traces of my dad. Which is why we know the Hostiles took him. Which is why the agents have been negotiating with the Hostiles. Which is why they’re bringing him home today.”