Chapter 23
Master Talik.
After Silas told us the stories about him, it felt like I almost knew the man.
In fact, we were sitting in the Hollow, all around the three-legged table, eating and talking and trying to keep Silas distracted with questions, and I couldn’t wait to see his face again, certain that I’d remember more this time when I did.
But Master Talik had gone to see Calren Hock the moment we’d come out of that hatch and Kohen told him that Calren was indeed here. He’d disappeared into the darkness of the corridor almost two hours ago and had yet to emerge.
Meanwhile, Silas looked like he was seeing a ghost in his head any time he wasn’t talking or listening to someone talking to him. He’d get that distant look on his face, his cheeks would get pale, and his fisted hands white—and we all knew what he was thinking about.
The Host.
Reggie.
Each time he did that, I was reminded of the promise I made, knowing that I couldn’t keep it. I was reminded of the look in his eyes then, the desperation, the feeling in my chest then, just as heavy as it was now.
An unfulfilled promise. I never thought I’d see the day. Anything unfulfilled spelled chaos for a Spade, but a promise like this?
It made my stomach twist and turn every second.
But then there was March. He stuck close to me, always close to me. He listened when I talked. He was there to offer me his hand any time I leaned back in the chair—as if he knew exactly what it was like inside my chest.
Time’s Teeth, I couldn’t wait to see him alone again, when it was just the two of us. I couldn’t wait to kiss those lips that gripped my attention any time he moved them, became the most important thing in the universe to me every time he spoke.
Whatever it was about him, I was so thankful for every second that made him. I was so thankful that he was here; otherwise, I had no idea how I’d have survived all of this.
“What about our families?” asked Seth from across the table, and that word pulled me out of my trance at once. Family. I hadn’t given my parents a proper thought since we got here—but then again, I’d had a lot going on. “Do they know? Can we contact them somehow?”
“No,” Silas said, so fast it was like the word had been lying in wait at the tip of his tongue. “The queens will be watching your homes, your families. If we write to them, they will be the ones to get the letters, I promise you.”
Seth flinched, but he knew it was the truth.
Nobody argued.
“So…what now?” I wondered, and my own voice surprised me, the thought sneaking out without my really thinking about speaking.
Nobody had an answer. We were all looking down at the tabletop, at our laps—me at March’s hand between both of mine.
And I thought I would call it a day, no matter that it was still just four in the afternoon.
We’d been down there for about five hours, even if it had felt like a lot longer, but I wanted to lie down. Alone. With March.
I wanted to…see what he tasted like. What he felt like against my hands.
I wanted to know him intimately.
But before I could ask him if he wanted to go to his room or mine, the darkness in front of the doorway moved, and suddenly both Master Talik and the Timekeeper Kohen came through, with Damon right behind them.
“Now, we talk,” said one or the other—I couldn’t really tell because all of us were suddenly trying to sit up, to look alert, to stand still somehow at the same time.
The Timekeepers moved fast, dragged chairs from the other side of the room and brought them to the head of the table to sit with us. The way they moved was almost like they were coordinated—parts of the same machine.
“You’ve already met my friend Talik. Silas remembers him, of course, and the rest of you were close—” Kohen started, and Master Talik muttered under his breath, “I wouldn’t say close, per se…”
But Kohen continued like he hadn’t heard a thing. “He’s been under the looking glass lately, and he’s been staying back at the Labyrinth to take care of Calren since the trials’ end. He’s the reason we knew Calren was there in the first place, before he cut off all contact with us—”
At which point Master Talik muttered, “Safer, safer that way—I was being watched every second—”
“—until you went in and found him,” Kohen finished.
“Yes. Till you came in and simply took him,” the man said, looking at us from under his lashes.
I was wrong—I didn’t remember him. Almost, like all things, but not quite. Never exactly.
“We saved him. He was…he was bleeding and—” Mimi started.
“Oh, I know, dear girl. I know,” he said. “And I am thankful. I’m told it was the Spades who felt the lock—of course you did.”
His eyes moved from me to Cook, then back again. I suddenly felt naked sitting there.
“Should have thought to bring one down with me—I searched that wall dozens of times but never found it.” He tapped his temple.
“Calren knew Timekeepers would be searching. He’s sneaky like that.
” An almost-smile curled the corners of his lips just slightly.
“He was always smarter than the rest of us.”
“Were you the one who sent him food?” March asked.
“I arranged it, yes. I bathed him, too, when he allowed. Which wasn’t often,” said Master Talik with a nod. “You were brave, all of you. I am proud to have been your teacher. But—”
“Have you seen him?”
Silas’s voice was ice cold and sharp as a knife when he cut the Timekeeper off.
“Have you been down there to see him?” The way he looked at Master Talik now was nothing like he had before, in the Horologist’s study. Now he was accusing him.
And the old Timekeeper cast his eyes downward immediately. “I have.”
“And?” Silas insisted—and we all knew whom they were talking about now. We all knew they meant Reggie, so we all held our breath and waited…
“There’s nothing to be done without bringing the Labyrinth apart completely—which is impossible,” said Master Talik. “It’s not him anymore. The game has him.”
The game has him, the game has him—I was starting to really hate those words and what they meant.
“And Helen?” March said, making shivers rush down my back.
Master Talik moved uncomfortably in his chair. “Her family saw the body. She was buried in the Labyrinth grounds.”
Stabs-stabs-stabs at my heart.
Dead. A Hand was dead, another lost to a game. Alive, but…not.
A Hand was buried in the Labyrinth.
“So, that’s it? Nobody will be held accountable. Nobody will care—and five years later, the Trials will start again—is that right?” Silas said, his voice rising with every word, mirroring the pace at which my anger grew.
Dead. Lost. Dead. Lost. De—
“Protocols have changed. There are now different magics in place to make sure things don’t take a turn for the worse ever again,” said Master Talik. “The Labyrinth is not a joke. It is its own master. It makes its own rules, and we have to abide by—”
“It’s unchecked magic that they steal from the rest of the realm!”
Silas was on his feet, screaming.
Damon stood up, too, and so did March and Seth.
Meanwhile, I closed my eyes to realize they’d been full of tears. I focused on my breathing, on how empty my hands felt as they argued, asked each other to sit down, to talk calmly.
They told us it was all in the past and there was nothing we could do.
And they—the other Hands who weren’t falling down imaginary holes on the ground—told them that this was unfair, that it could have been any one of us, that somebody needed to be held accountable for Helen and Reggie.
On and on it went, for at least a couple of minutes. All the while I fell and cried and tried to see Helen’s face in my mind, tried to pull out the memory of her from wherever it hid in the darkness, tried to call out her name, to see if she’d answer.
I tried to keep my promise to Silas, too, even if only in my imagination, but nothing I thought about worked. No idea did the trick. Then…
“Ora.”
Ground.
Ground beneath my feet, not a hole.
Eyes in front of mine, brown and red and every color in between.
There was nothing I wanted to immortalize more than them. If only I knew the secret to drawing a soul as bright as his in a way that you saw it on paper…
“I’m okay,” I whispered when he raised my chin, and he looked at me like there wasn’t anything more pressing to him in those moments than the look on my face.
“Are you sure?” he asked, as if I had an option not to be okay. As if I could just walk out of here any time I pleased and forget about all of this.
I nodded. “I am. I’m fine.” A lie that would have no other choice but to become true eventually.
Everyone was sitting down again. Silas had his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, eyes closed. Master Talik’s cheeks were red, and Kohen looked like he was about to cry any second.
“We can speak like adults,” Master Talik said, his voice low, dark. “We can figure out a way onward. All that has happened has happened already.”
“And we still are nowhere near an answer,” March said. He’d dragged his chair even closer to me and held my hand over his lap now, sandwiched between both of his. “We’re brought here against our will, and we did everything you told us to do, but your stories are not enough.”
“We still don’t remember,” Mimi said from his other side.
“I still don’t know how I got to this end of time, and nothing you’ve told us so far has made a difference,” said Erith.
“And nothing they say will.” Silas. “This was the queen’s doing—”
“We don’t know that—” Master Talik started, but Silas wasn’t having it.
“It is. Your memories were taken from you by the Red Queen. Only she would have the necessary expertise, power, and Sparetime to use. Memory magic is the most expensive magic out there—you know this.” Slowly, he raised his head and locked eyes with Master Talik.
Silas looked murderous. “Who else would have the power, the Sparetime? Who else?”
Master Talik didn’t answer.
“I believe it, too. It was the Red Queen. She has always been a master at memory magic,” Kohen said instead.