Impulse (18 page)

She shrugged. ‘I moved in early. Marko organised it for me this morning.'

‘Oh, okay.' I glanced over her shoulder into the shadowy, dark interior of the house. ‘So where's Robbie?'

‘He's asleep.' She stepped out and closed the door behind her. She wore a man's shirt and lacy underwear, her legs bare and long. I was about to comment but stopped when I realised she could get around Robbie nude and he probably wouldn't be able to tell she was naked.

‘Is he okay?'

She shook her head, her brows furrowing with concern.

‘When I arrived this morning he was awake and sitting up at the kitchen table, fully dressed in a white angel suit with these beautiful wings on his back.' She leaned in and lowered her voice. ‘His face was all tear-stained, as though he'd been crying the whole night. When I asked him if he was okay he tried to cover it up and mumbled something about being tired, before he hobbled off to his bedroom. He's hurt his leg. It was awful to see him messed up like that, Randy. He looked so sad.'

I recalled Robbie saying at the ball how he wished he could still look out for Marko and me, and then the way he'd tripped and fallen on his face.

‘Let me see him. I have to make sure he's okay.'

Lauren cut me off when I tried to step past her to the door.

‘No guy wants a girl to know he's been crying. Let him sleep first and I'll come and get you when he wakes up. He'll feel better then, and more likely to want to talk.'

I sighed. She was right. ‘Promise me you'll come get me as soon as he wakes up?'

‘I promise.' She waved her hands at me. ‘Now go and let him get some rest.'

Why was she trying to get rid of me so quickly? It was weird. Something told me she was hiding something, or
someone.
But I decided not to press it just this once.

‘Look after him. I mean it. No entertaining this lover of yours while Robbie's like this. He's a good guy, and he doesn't need some guard—who we don't even know we can trust—sneaking around his house.'

‘Everything is fine. Robbie will be fine. Just go.'

I headed back to the castle, fake wind swirling my hair around my head. Was a storm in Marin possible? The light crystals had been dimmed, so that the city appeared gloomy and grey, despite it still being morning. The ‘sky' was dark enough to be a black storm above us. Marko had said himself that they tried to mimic the seasons as closely as possible to the surface. Maybe the faux storm was some kind of omen of darker days ahead for the city of Marin. I shivered and quickened my pace, racing back to the castle so that I could have a quick visit with Anne before she left to go home to her family. Though I believed Marko entirely, I wanted to know the truth from Anne, to ask her why she was spreading such awful lies, and to maybe extract from her the source of these rumours.

Running along the corridors, I rounded a bend and bumped into Jonathan, one of the few guards Marko had mentioned that he'd trust with his life.

He was so tall it almost hurt my neck to meet his gaze.

‘Hi. Have you seen Anne?'

Sweat beads gathered across his forehead and dripped down his face. He took a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and started mopping them up.

‘No. I've been looking everywhere for her. She's not in her room, and all her things are gone. She wasn't supposed to leave the castle until tomorrow, because of her weakened
state. I was supposed to take her home. I've got a funny feeling about this.' He shrugged, his brows furrowing. ‘Anne once told me how much she liked you, and that she always felt you could be trusted. I'm worried, Miranda, Anne and I have been friends since we were babies; we grew up next door to each other.'

By the way his cheeks blushed as red as the hair on his head, and from the concern in his eyes, I could tell Anne possibly meant more to Jonathan than just a friend.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure my own personal guard, who'd caught up with me on my way back to the castle, remained at a respectful distance.

‘Let's find her together, then.'

Jonathan checked over his own shoulders. ‘I'll meet you at the doors to your room in half an hour. I have something to do first.' His green eyes widened. ‘Don't tell anyone of our plans; only Marko, if you have to. If one of the other guards catches wind of this, we could put Anne in more danger than she already is.'

He waved at the other guard and said, ‘You're dismissed now, I've got her.'

The man shrugged and disappeared down the corridor.

‘Do you think something bad has happened?' The thought of Grandfather Tollin's study with the hideous instruments and disgusting book depicting a human female morphing into a mermaid sent an icy shiver down my back.

‘I do.' Jonathan's green eyes flashed with anger. ‘I found holes in her arms a few days ago. She said she'd had her blood taken.' He shook his head and wiped more sweat from his brow. ‘I keep picturing her in pain and locked away somewhere—helpless.'

‘We'll find her.'

He nodded, without appearing convinced, and headed down the corridor.

‘Wait,' I called out.

‘Yes?' A vein bulged at the centre of his forehead.

‘And when we do, she'll be fine.'

Jonathan nodded and rounded the corner, muttering, ‘Let's hope so.'

A
S SOON AS
I got to my room, I burst through the adjoining door to Marko's room to tell him about Anne; but he wasn't there.

Great.

I paced the floor, wondering how long I'd have to wait, and also if he'd get here before Jonathan did. I didn't want to go looking for Anne without telling Marko first. It didn't seem right.

After five agonisingly long minutes, I found myself staring at the blank wall that was the secret door. If I was quick enough, I could have another look at the old drawings of Marin—at the moon that the Kraja statue raises to the sky, to make sure it was the same one in the ballroom—and then explain to Marko my crazy theory about the infertility crisis.

I rushed to the wall, lifted my trembling hands to it, and almost dove through as it opened, crossing the dusty, cobwebbed corridor and heading straight to the room with no door. Instead of trying to see the drawings through the window, I pressed my palms against the smooth stone walls of the room and willed it to open. Marko had said he'd tried and had failed, so I didn't expect results.

The wall remained cool beneath my fingertips.
Damn.
I pressed my cheek against the stone.

Please open; I want to help Marko. I want to help him save Marin, your beautiful city.

Just as I was going to give up my cheek began to warm, and I raised my head to see the stone glowing beneath my hands. Dust rained down on me. The wall trembled, and I drew my hands away just as it shot up and disappeared into the ceiling, making a raw, scraping sound that hurt my ears, and leaving behind a great, gaping doorway.

I coughed and covered my eyes with an arm until the dust settled, and then entered the room.

It was small: about the size of my bedroom at home. A single bed was pushed up against the wall that bore all the drawings—a normal enough room, until you saw all the levers and buttons on the other side, where some kind of control panel took up the entire wall. The buttons, made out of light crystal, glowed and pulsed eerily, as though alive. Marko was right. Kraja's people had to have been extra-terrestrial. I was probably standing in the control room of the ship. If the wrong person got into this room and pushed one of these buttons, or pulled the wrong lever, we could all end up dead. The pressure of the water pushing against a moving ship would be enough to crush us. It was probably why there was a bed here. Somebody had guarded this room with their life.

My guess was Kraja.

Backing away from the panel, I turned back to the illustrations of the city on the walls. Cobwebs weaved down from the ceiling, giving the impression of the city being wrapped in a fog.

The drawings were impressive—almost an exact replica of the real thing, the only difference being the Kraja statue. In the drawings, she held a large, white, moon-like orb
in her hands, whereas currently she wielded a spear. The closer I got, the more detail I saw: the moon had tiny, flattened edges, like the surface of a dragonfly's eye. It was exactly like the one in the ballroom.

People, none of whom I recognised from Marin today, obviously, stood crowded around Kraja's statue. They were dressed differently, in pale, knotted robes, and all had lean, muscled warrior bodies. One man stood out especially. He was huge, magnificently muscled, and towered over those around him. And yet he possessed a soft expression that made him seem gentle, despite his strong, angled jaw and piercing blue eyes. He'd been drawn with care, and coloured in detail, from his golden hair right down to the jewels on the hilt of the sword he kept sheathed at his waist.

My eyes fell on a young, leanly muscled woman with braided, snow-white hair: ‘Kraja,' I whispered. She stood before a circle of women who seemed to be dancing beneath the statue's moon.

Was this the original fertility dance? Had Marko's father seen this drawing through the window of the room and resurrected the ritual in hopes of restoring fertility to the women of Marin?

A tingly feeling prickled up my spine. Marko's grandfather, without access to the secret passageway, mustn't have understood the importance of the light-crystal moon's placement. He'd probably moved it into the ballroom, which had then somehow voided the moon of its power.

Adrenaline whooshed through my veins as I gently circled the hand-drawn globe with my fingers. Could the answers to Marin's fertility be as easy as this? Was it as easy as replacing the moon to its rightful place in the arms of Kraja's statue?

If Marko was the one to reinstate the moon, then perhaps all the deception and unrest that hung over the city would be lifted. The citizens would trust him again. His place as king would be firmly cemented. People would start having babies, and Damir would soon be forgotten and left to rot away in his cell.

My head grew dizzy with excitement as I left the room, and I silently thanked Kraja as the wall sealed shut behind me.

Marko was still gone when I returned to his room, but I couldn't wait around for him any longer—I could hear Jonathan whispering my name out in the corridor.

‘We'll visit Anne's parents first,' he said, once we were outside and descending the castle steps, ‘in case she's turned up in the past half-hour. If not, I'll head to Damir's den in the Underworld,
by myself
, and have a look around—in case he's got her hidden there.'

‘If it comes to that, I'll be coming, too.'

He threw me a look that said,
Marko is going to kill you
—
and then me
, but didn't protest any further.

We took a gondola, passing beneath several stone bridges until we reached suburbia; or, at least, Marin's version of it, with its indistinguishable, white-washed houses of similar shape and size, each with equal-sized front and back yards. They differed only in small ways: the number of potted plants out the front, or the design of their house number—some mosaic, some dotted pearls and others light crystal.

Jonathan stopped at a path leading up to one of the houses, one with hardly any decoration, save for a number eight, painted neatly, in black, at the centre of the front door. He nodded at the house next door. ‘That's my family home. I'd call in and introduce you to my parents, but I don't wish us to draw too much attention. My mother
would tell the entire city that I'd visited, and I don't want anybody knowing we're looking for Anne.'

I stared at the number eight on Anne's parents' door. ‘So what'll we say to Anne's parents?'

‘Let's hope she'll be here, so we won't have to worry about any of that.'

‘Agreed,' I said, as we started towards the door.

Jonathan knocked, and a few seconds later the door swung open, as though Anne's mother, a woman with jet-black hair and hazel eyes, had been standing right behind it, desperate for a knock.

‘Jonathan,' she said, her brows raised in immediate question. ‘Is Anne coming home early?' She stretched her neck to look out the doorway and then rested her gaze on me. ‘Why isn't she here, with you?'

‘Hello, I'm Miranda,' I said, extending my hand to Anne's mother, who looked nothing at all like her daughter. Anne must have taken after her father. She frowned at me and stepped back.

‘I hope you haven't brought any more bad luck with you. The city hasn't been right since you arrived last year. People are saying you've changed Marko. And when a king has changed then it's time for a new one.'

I withdrew my hand and stared back at the woman, speechless.

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes while she glared at Jonathan. ‘You promised to keep her safe in that castle, remember? The first day she started working there as a maid, you said, ‘I'll look after Anne, don't worry.' Her face twisted and reddened as she fought back tears. ‘But she hasn't looked herself for months, and not once did you come and tell me or Rupert that something wasn't right. Anne kept telling us she was working a lot of hours,
earning a bigger wage, and had lost a little weight as a result.' The woman snorted. ‘Then we find out from one of the guards, yesterday, that she was being used as a science experiment by
your
king.' She stared at me pointedly.

‘But Damir is not the king,' Jonathan said, softly.

‘I meant
Marko
!' she said, still glaring at me, before slamming the door shut in our faces.

‘Why does she think Marko is the one behind the experiments? Does everyone else think the same?' I asked Jonathan, who answered my question with a shrug.

‘I'm heading this way.' He pointed down the street and to the distant, darker roads, leading to the Underworld. ‘If you like, I can escort you back to the castle first.'